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WITHDRAWN 
University of 
Illinois Library — 
at Urbana-Champaign 


BOOKS BY 
CAROLINE DALE SNEDEKER 
ES 

Tue PertLous SEAT 
Tue SPARTAN 

Tueras AnD His Town 
Downricut DENCEY 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2023 with funding from 
Kahle/Austin Foundation 


https://archive.org/details/owb_ P8-BAP-007 


SAVERY OF 


WC. 
a ff 
* A) 


COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE 
& COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


TO 
MY SISTER AND BELOVED ENCOURAGER 


NINA PARKE STILWELL 


THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 


y yes Ns 
an a a TH od ea ih fae 
1 Lat > tee LM oa —y | ac he Sa 2 


Pian pr) Sia 


PREFACE 


InN NAMING the characters of this story I have 
chosen real Nantucket surnames with fictitious 
Christian names. All the characters are fictitious, 
though I have given to one of them a historical 
Nantucket experience. The chapter “Someone Is 
Hungry” is a true Quaker incident, though it did 
not happen on Nantucket. I have used the former 
name State Street instead of the present Main 
Street. The Coffin School was founded about seven 
years later than I have indicated in my story. Its 
first building was on Fair and Lyon streets. It was 
always a remarkable school, having fine teachers. 

My deep gratitude is due to Miss Mary Starbuck 
for many interesting and constructive suggestions 
and for guarding me from errors into which the 
Off-Islander must inevitably fall. 


CAROLINE DALE SNEDEKER. 


bad a 2 babe inh 2 4&5 W landae 


“dvi ote 


ey it 


yA de 4 reli i 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 
BOOK ONE 


Dionts THROWS THE STONE . 
Tue CoNnsEQUENCE BEGINS 
Tue Upper Room . 
FORGIVENESS FOR THE STONE. 
OuT oN THE ComMoNS. 


THE PricE oF FORGIVENESS . 


BOOK TWO 


THE ForMER TIME. 


’ 


“TI Cannot Marry out oF MEETING” . 


Tue PERPETUAL FRONTIER 
Tue Famity on Fair STREET 
A WonpDeERFUL NIGHT . 

OuT OF THE ORIENT 


FATHER AND DENCEY . 
ix 


XXII. 
XXII. 
XXIII. 
XXIV. 
XXV. 
XXVI. 
XXVIII. 
XXVIII. 
XXIX. 
XXX. 
XXXI,. 


CONTENTS 
BOOK THREE 
MEETING JETSAM 
Brown’s Barn . 
Tue BeLtovep Aunt LovEstTa. 


Tue ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 


More ADVENTURE OF THE COAT. 


Tue ADVENTURE OF THE Book 
INJUN JILL Knows . 

Tue ADVENTURE OF DENCEY . 
InJUN J1LL PursuEs 

THE PRomIsE 

THE UNSPEAKABLE JETSAM 
THE PRISONER . 

THE SHEARING . 

Pure Maacic 

JETSAM IN THE LANE 


SpaRKs THat Fty Upwarp 


Tue HorriB_eE PRroressor SNUBSHOE 


Dencey Makes up HER MIND 


PAGE 


99 
107 
113 
117 
122 
127 
134 
137 
142 
147 
156 
160 
164 
173 
178 
182 
188 


196 


CHAPTER 


XXXII. 


XXXII. 
XXXIV. 
XXXV. 
XXXVI. 
XXXVIT. 
XXXVITI. 
XXXIX. 
XL. 
XLI. 
XLII. 
XLITI. 
XLIV. 
XLV. 
XLVI. 
XLVII. 
XLVITII. 
XLIX. 


CONTENTS 
Dencrey UNDER ConcERN 
In THE STORM 
SAMMIE JETSAM IN LIMBo 
Jetsam Discovers THE CoFFYNS 
HUNGER OF THE MIND 
THE CoMMITTEE ON SUFFERINGS 
Goinc Berore Her GuibeE . 
SomEoneE Is Hunery. 
A Roya ScHOoOoL . 
Beaux! 
Tue HuskiInG 
Tue HALF-BREED 
A STRANGER IN THE House . 
Tue Frienpty Dicky Dicks 
Tue SPRINGTIDE OF THE SPIRIT 
Jetsam FINDs THE CLUE- 
Tue CuHINESE Brrp CaGE 


OrF To SEA 


xi 
203 
211 
223 
228 
234 
240 
245 
249 
259 
266 
273 
277 
282 
287 
291 
299 
304 
309 


a Acs 
vat A 


BOOK ONE 


mite: ee 


IPs in 


CHAPTER I 


DIONIS THROWS THE STONE 


P AHE Quaker children, going along toward 


school, paused and sniffed delighted noses. 

The warm air of the little Nantucket street 
was shot through with vigor and challenge; the 
breeze smelt of the purity of a thousand miles of 
open water. Spring was come. The boys were pro- 
gressing by means of a game of leapfrog in keeping 
with the season. But the girls walked with a deco- 
rousness due partly to admonition, partly to the 
flowing skirts, and the stays with inch-wide whale- 
bones, which held their childish bodies slenderly 
erect. All of a piece were they with the fan-topped 
doorways and the white picket fences which so 
carefully enclosed the tiny front plots. 

Below them, in full view of the street’s cosiness, 
spread the spring-lighted sea, violet-misted and 
endless. The children gazed toward it, but only to 

I 


2 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


sight a brig, delicately small in the distance, stand- 
ing round the Point. 

For ships were news. 

Now the children turned from North Water 
Street uptown along Federal, passing the open lot 
where, a generation later, was to be built the pretty 
Atheneum. Here along the grassy space stood rows 
of whale-oil casks. The boys whacked them as they 
passed, ringing out interesting sounds, high, low, 
medium, each barrel a different sepulchral tone. 
Charming instrument for their spring mood! 

“Be careful, Dionis,” cautioned one little girl to 
her companion. “Thee flipped thy dress right 
against a cask. Why, there’s a spot.” 

“Oh, dear!’ Dionis looked in consternation. 
“Those horrid smelly things, and Mother’ll punish 
me again.” 

“Tl clean it for thee. Thee come home with me 
after school,” urged the other helpfully. 

Dionis forgot to thank her, for at that moment 
something caught her eye, and her mind leaped 
off on a new interest. It was nothing more than an 
Ivy vine growing out of a rift in a stone wall. 

“Look, Hopestill,” she cried, eagerly stooping to 
touch the hardy little thing. “ Father told me some- 
thing wonderful about this ivy.” 

“That little spindling sprig? Why, that’s caine 
wonderful.” 

“Yes, tis. It’s grown quite a bit since Father 


DIONIS THROWS THE STONE 3 


was here. I’ve looked at it every time I go by. 
Father says it will split the stone wall wide apart, 
because you see it is alive.” 

“Alive! My pussy cat is alive, but not that thing, 
not really.” 

“Well, I guess thy pussy cat couldn’t claw open 
the stones and the ivy can.” 

“That’s silly, Dencey Coffyn. I don’t care if thy 
father did say it, I’m going to ask my father,” de- 
clared Hopestill. “This very afternoon.” 

Dionis made no answering appeal to authority. 
Her father was three thousand miles away on the 
West Coast, looking for whales. Dionis must stand 
upon her own feet. 

“No,” she maintained. “I know it. The roots 

They turned now into State Street.* Here the 
mild morning trading was in progress at the little 
stores. Sailors in their pea-jackets and floppy trous- 
ers rolled up the street and stared boredly. And 
here a tributary stream of school goers met the 
little Quaker band. 

These other children came swarming up from the 
crowded region of docks and tidal streets—the boys 
of the Fragment Society School. Democratic 
Quakerism had yet its strata and its orders, and 
this was the lowest. To go to the charity school 
of the Fragment Society was indeed a taint. 


*Now the famous Main Street of Nantucket. 


4 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


These ragamuffins knew it and were therefore 
brazen. 

And were not these North Water Street children 
their special enemies, for did not these go to the 
newly founded Coffin School where none but an- 
cestral Coffin blood might attend? Were they not 
all high-nosed aristocrats? It was a new feud but 
thoroughly vigorous. A low chanting of ribald 
song was heard: 


“Tf I was a Coffin, I’d go in the ground, 

For that is the place where coffins are found. 
Bury ’em deep 
Or out they'll peep 

Bury the Coffins deep in the ground. 
Bury ’em. Bury ’em. Bury ’em. 


Sons of the non-fighting Quakers turned de- 
fensively. 

“Ho! Fragmenters! Fragmenters! Come on, 
we'll trounce ye,” they yelled back, down the 
sloping street. 

The chantey ceased. But soon a shrill Fragmenter 
broke out from a new quarter. 

“Dionis Coffyn. Hi! Dionis Coffyn’s a tomboy.” 

“Leave the girls be,” shouted the gallant Coffin 
boys. 

Dionis walked onward, sedate and unhearing. 
Surely this particular Dionis Coffyn was not the 


DIONIS THROWS THE STONE 5 


one meant. Straight shouldered, with her kerchief 
crossed upon her thin little chest, her gray bonnet 
hiding her face, her gray skirts moving volumi- 
nously forward. There, in the riotous spring sun- 
shine, she was a very spirit of quiet and serenity. 

“Tomboy! tomboy!” came the cry again. 

Dionis gripped Hopestill’s hand. 

“Does thee suppose Bob Merrill saw me climb 
that fence?” 

“What if he did?” whispered the loyal Hopestill. 
“Thee had to climb to get out of the meadow.” 

“But I climbed worse than that.” (A confession, 
this.) “In Grandmother Severance’s garden. That 
tree with red blossoms. I climbed to the very top. 
My dress kept catching and tore in three places. 
I had to dip candles all next day for punishment. 
I hate to make candles.” 

“T always make the candles,” said Hopestill, a 
trifle loftily. “I know it tires Mother, so I make 
them.” 

Hopestill was a pious child. Her parents never 
had to command her, she obeyed before the com- 
mand. Dionis tossed her head. 

“T hate candles,” she said. “I don’t have incomes 
of the Spirit like thee.” 

“Oh, don’t say that, Dencey. Thee must have 
the Spirit. The Lord won’t wait for thee always. 
Aunt Vesta said so last meeting.” There was trag- 
edy curiously mature in Hopestill’s pleading. 


6 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


But suddenly the Fragment boys were at their 
very heels. They had followed the girls up Fair 
Street and now began anew. 

“Hi, Hopestill! Hi, Hopestill! Does yer hope 
keep still or does it cry out? Oh, I know what she 
hopes for—a sweetheart. Hope still for a sweet- 
heart.” 

Dionis, with a swift dip, picked up a stone—a 
skilled gesture. Her face flushed crimson. Hope- 
still clutched the uplifted arm. 

“Don’t, don’t thee throw at them. I don’t care 
what they say!” 

“Thee should care. I won’t have them naming 
thee in the street.” 

“Please, Dencey, thee will be sorry.” 

Dionis struggled in the clasp, but Hopestill held 
on. “Remember what the discipline says, Dencey. 
Resist not evil.” 

It is a wonder with such preachment that Dionis 
did not break away forthwith. But she loved Hope- 
still with an adoring love. She dropped the stone 
and the two walked on, not hastening their pace, 
apparently serene. Real Quaker self-control. 

At their heels kept their tormenters. 

“Ts it for Bob Merrill ye are hopin’ still? Is it 
for Blake Folger? Who is it, Hopestill?” 

Onward steadily. Only the quivering of the rear 
frills of their drab bonnets showed their mental 


agony. 


DIONIS THROWS THE STONE + 


Strange cruelty of children! 

At the corner of the lane came an unexpected 
diversion—a rescue, so it seemed at first—for out 
of the lane came a ragged boy, a boy neither 
Fragment nor Coffin, who was the peculiar object 
of all teasing in Nantucket. This boy tempted Fate 
—“ Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” 
—and he yelled out: | 

“Oh, you Fragmenters! Goin’ to Fragment 
School! I don’t have to go—nowheres.”’ 

Instantly the Fragmenters forgot their girl vic- 
tims. 

“Hi! Jetsam, Jetsam,” they yelled. “Saved off 
a wreck like a ole piece o’ wood. Driftwood Sam- 
mie!” 

They referred to the boy’s origin. He had been 
saved from a wreck on the South Shore. 

The boy stopped short. His hard little face whit- 
ened with anger. 

““You—you—you ” he muttered. He seemed 
vainly trying to think of some retort as brilliant as 
theirs. His roving eyes met Dionis Coffyn’s. 

Perhaps he thought Dionis was one of his tor- 
menters. Perhaps he had not the courage to face 
the Fragment boys. Whatever the cause, he shrilled 
out at Dencey: 

“Hello, Nigger-face! Portugee girl! Portugee 
girl!” 

Ah, that thorn in the flesh of Dionis Coffyn! No 


8 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


one, not even Hopestill, knew the deep wounding 
of that thorn—her swarthy complexion. The Cof- 
fyns, those that spelled it with a y, were dark; and 
on her mother’s side she was related to the Pratts, 
who some of them “really might be taken for for- 
eigners.” The two darknesses had descended to- 
gether upon Dionis, who was uncompromisingly 
brunette. 

What a fate for a girl! 

Suddenly, like a bursting dam, Dencey’s long- 
held self-control gave way. Mob spirit seized her. 

The boy Jetsam, with that “Nigger-face” taunt, 
had fled, and, with one leap, Dionis was after him. 
The Fragmenters, too, gave chase—a yelling, 
shrilling mob. Dionis was in their midst, nay, in 
the forefront of them, like a flying cloud—all. all 
after the same desperate quarry—the Jetsam 
boy. The housewives of Fair Street hurried to their 
windows in consternation at the noise. “Those 
Fragment boys must surely be dealt with.” 

Dionis ran like a deer, spite of the stays which 
held her in their whalebone armor, spite of the full, 
long skirts. It took genius to run with such handi- 
caps. Now she swooped up a stone, threw it force- 
fully overhand. Heaven only knows where she got 
her skill. Her dress fluttered balloon-like in the 
wind, her bonnet fell back, showing the black, 
black tossing of her hair, her eyes were full of cruel 
light. She was quite unconscious of the Fragment 


DIONIS THROWS THE STONE 9 


boys about her. She only knew that Jetsam had 
called her Nigger-face. Now they were out beyond 
the streets, beyond the lanes. They passed Mill Hill 
and were flying along the open road in the Com- 
mons where Jetsam’s home was. He dropped his 
basket of eggs, a devastating breakage. And still 
the screaming rout kept after him. 

Then a stone—could it have been Dencey’s?— 
hit the boy’s shoulder, cut deep, and, with a cry of 
dismay and of giving up, Jetsam dropped in the 
road. There he crouched, swaying to and fro, 
clutching his bleeding shoulder. 

“Oh, now ye’ve done it! Darn ye, darn every 
one of ye!” he cried. “All right, [ll tell the tithing 
man on ye. He'll fix ye.” 

Meanwhile, back in pretty Fair Street, stood 
Hopestill, clasping her hands together in convulsive 
horror. She gazed after the disappearing Dionis— 
the flying disgrace of her, the impossible disaster. 
In Hopestill’s gentle face there was no boasting 
now, only pity, deep brooding pity. 

“Oh, poor Dencey! Why did thee do it!” she 
moaned. “Oh, thee will be so sorry, so sorry!” 


CHAPTER II 


THE CONSEQUENCE BEGINS 


UT in the calm soul of Hopestill there could 
B be no realization of the sorrow which she 
prophesied. It was Dencey’s sorrow. It came 
down upon Dencey like the sudden night—a black 
remorse in which she saw with. swift mature judg- 
ment the thing she had done. The pitiful thin shoul- 
der blade of the boy bleeding where her missile had 
cut—she glimpsed it through a rent in his shirt, and 
how it moved convulsively as with sobs. The boy 
all of a sudden had given up the fight, he who had 
been so brave and defiant at the first. 

All this brought the dire, overwhelming knowl- 
edge to Dionis. 

The Fragment boys were swarming about the 
prone figure. They were a little afraid of what they 
had done, and this made them the more cruel. 

“Aw, git up. Ye ain’t hurted. Ye’re just monkey- 
in’; yerare. 

10 


THE CONSEQUENCE BEGINS II 


Dionis dashed in between them like an avenging 
fury. 

“He is hurt,” she shouted. “Can’t you all see the 
bleeding? You boys leave him be. Don’t you dare 
touch him!” 

“Touch! Lord A’mighty! It was you hit him, not 
us,” laughed the foremost boy. 

“Well, anyway, thee leave him alone. You’ve all 
done enough. I'll tell the tithing man myself—on 
all of us, thee, me—all,”’ she cried. 

“Well, what do you think of that?” grinned the 
boy, edging nearer. 

Dionis was half sobbing, but there was no weak- 
ness in her sobs. 

“You get away—every one of you! Go off! Go 
away!” she stormed. And with a dash wholly un- 
expected, she flung herself upon the foremost 
Fragment boy sprawling him backward against the 
others. 

But it was her frenzy which scared them rather 
than her onslaught. She had summoned some un- 
used and unexpected strength. The Fragmenters 
fled before it—derisive still, but they fled. 

Dionis knelt by the boy. 

“Oh, I hurt thee! "T'was me—me that did its 

She snatched out her handkerchief to wipe the 
wound, but the boy kicked at her viciously. And 
now he began to launch a string of abusive words 
which Dionis had never heard before—all at her, 


12 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


all about her. She did not know what the words 
meant, but somehow they frightened her worse 
than the blows. They were like some horrible 
stench she could not bear. 

“Don’t, oh, don’t,” she pleaded. “I’m trying 
Oh, doesn’t thee see I’m sorry? I didn’t mean 
to 39 


“Didn’t mean to! Good Lord, ye aimed well 
enough, ye Quaker cat—ye spitfire—ye—ye— 
ye 99 


The boy drowned her words with his swearing 
and abuse. He leaped up clawing at her. Terror 
surmounted Dencey’s pity. She struggled to her 
feet, she turned and ran—ran as though fiends 
pursued her. 

Back toward town along the sandy road—stum- 
bling among the bayberry bushes and over the soft 
barren heath. Now the first straggling lanes and 
low houses. She was sobbing, trying to hush her 
sobs and failing miserably. She could not go to her 
school, in her disheveled state—into that Quaker 
neatness. Oh, never. And she must keep still; 
people would hear her and ask her why. She turned 
down toward the harbor, threading the streets of 
the Portuguese, Negroes, and Indian half-breeds 
—places she hardly knew by sight. 

Now she came to the busy shipping district, the 
low land at the water’s edge. The place swarmed 
with men—such dark-skinned men—rolling barrels, 


THE CONSEQUENCE BEGINS 13 


driving drays, drying nets. There was a Fiji Islander 
in his native costume, or lack of it, nonchalantly 
busy with the rest. Dionis felt as strange as though 
she were in some foreign land. Here were the sail 
lofts, the long narrow sheds of rope walks, the can- 
dle factory, and the insistent smell of whale oil. 
Of course, she was never allowed to come here. Oh, 
dear, what would Mother say! How one sin led to 
another and another! What a desperate world! 

She must get home, but she must find her way 
where no one knew her or cared. The absorption 
in this task quelled her sobs. She straightened her 
bonnet and tucked in all her hair, smoothed her 
kerchief and shook out her skirts and again began 
to go very fast. She could turn now along the har- 
bor edge toward home. Here, streets there were 
none, only muddy, winding lanes between ware- 
houses. A ship was at the dock, fitting out for her 
four-year voyage. She was like a busy ant hill to- 
ward which all were tending. A delicious smell. of 
pilot-biscuit filled the air. But Dionis noticed none 
of this. She was terrified at passing the foot of 
State Street, where surely some uncle or cousin 
would sight her. She dodged hither and yon behind 
fish houses and sheds. 

Ah, there was Brant Point Light! Home was near. 
She had only to cross a lonely, sandy place. Des- 
perately, she hurried through the low meadow 
grass to her own back yard. All the while, she was 


14 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


strangely occupied in pushing something back out 
of her mind. She was more frightened at this thing 
within than at any outward adventure. Cau- 
tiously, she peered through the high back gate. 
Only the cow in her yard switched her tail in mild 
recognition. And Dionis, with heart in her throat, 
slipped through the yard into the side door and 
up the back stairs. 

Oh, the refuge at last, the deep-fetched breath 
of relief! She was in her own dormered room. 


CHAPTER III 


THE UPPER ROOM 


IONIS closed the door softly. The vacancy 
1) of the room met her, appalling—the view 
of the wide, dreaming sea from the open 
windows—appalling too. Oh, better to be out 
among the harbor streets trying to find her anxious 
way. Better to have been caught there than this. 
For here she would have to face it—the thing she 
had done. The cruel, terrible, unbelievable thing. 
She busied herself nervously, untied her bonnet, 
hung it on its accustomed peg. She was not think- 
ing of God. It was enough that she would have to 
face herself. She began to brush her hair, but 
abruptly abandoned it. Slowly she drew from 
underneath the bed a low stool and sat down upon 
it and carefully spread her large handkerchief on 
her knee. Then, suddenly, some spirit thing in her 
gave way—swept her like a tide with the wind be- 
hind it. She began to sob in a shaking fashion new 
15 


16) DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


in her experience—huddled together on her low 
stool. - 

Yes, this wicked deed had sprung upon her out 0 
the air, so unlooked for. But, no, she had done it 
herself. Of course, she knew that. Herself, herself! 
The ancient mea culpa rolled through her. She had 
been wicked before, often, but never this wicked. 
Never had she hurt anything—cat or dog or even a 
doll. Surely this was the devil’s doing, the devil of 
whom Presbyterian Grandfather had so fearfully 
told her. Perhaps she belonged to the devil com- 
pletely. Some people did. Yes, some people who 
lived in this very street. Perhaps she too was fore- 
ordained to hell. 

She had cruelly hurt that poor Sammie Jetsam 
whom all were hurting. She had cut him on the 
shoulder with a stone, when everybody, everybody 
was hurting him too. Of course, he had cursed her 
and hated her. She deserved it. She deserved it all. 
Dionis was beyond caring for her mother’s reproof 
or her grandfather’s probable whipping. She was 
past everything—far out on a road she had never 
trod before. 


Toward noon, her mother, coming into the room, 
found her. Lydia Coffyn was frightened at the 
child’s condition. 

“Dionis, what is it?” She knelt by the bowed 
little figure. “Is thee ill? Why is thee not at 


THE UPPER ROOM 17 


school?” She held the small shaking hands. “Be 
quiet,’ she commanded. “Does thee hear me? Be 
quiet and answer my questions. Whatever has 
happened, thee has no right to act this way. 
Answer me!” 

Suddenly Dencey’s voice came back—a strange 
shrill voice unlike her own, as everything was un- 
like in this black day. 

“Oh, I am wicked, wicked. Thee’d better leave 
me alone, Mother, Thee’ll never love me again.” 

“Child, never say that. What has thee done? 
Tell me quickly.” 

Lydia’s fright made her very stern. She actually 
shook Dencey’s shoulder—a thing unheard of for 
her to do. She seemed to shake the truth out of her 
daughter, for it came in a torrent. 

“TI threw a stone at Jetsam—that boy, thee 
knows lives with old Injun Jill. I hit him on the 
shoulder and it cut him, and the blood ran. He 
fell down, Mother. He fell down because I hit 
him.” 

Lydia almost uttered an exclamation, that prac- 
tice so against Quaker discipline. She faltered out: 

“But why? What had he done to thee?” 

“Nothing, Mother, just nothing.’”’ Dionis was in 
no mood to recount extenuating circumstances. 
“Oh, all the Fragment boys were hectoring him, 
and running after, trying to hurt him. And he was 
so scared. He ran and ran—way past Mill Hill. 


18 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


And I didn’t help him, I helped the boys who were 
hurting him. ]——”’ 

“But, why? Why, Dionis, my child? Why did 
thee do such a wicked thing?” 

“Qh—oh, I don’t know!” Dencey’s head went 
down again. “It wasn’t just one stone, Mother,” 
she insisted. “I threw and threw and threw until 
I hit him. And all the boys were throwing stones 
at him too, and I helped them.” 

Lydia’s self-control returned to her. 

“Dionis, thy story has no sense at all. It cannot 
be so that the boy did nothing to thee and yet thee 
hurt him. Stop telling falsehoods and tell me the 
truth!” 

But to Dionis now it seemed indeed that Jetsam 
nad done nothing. That nigger name he had called 
her was so slight a thing compared to her own 
wrong doing. A kind of loyalty to the boy took 
hold on her. No, he had done nothing, nothing, she 
insisted. 

Lydia patiently took another tack. 

“Thee says he fell down, but surely he got up 
again. Thee did not hurt him so badly as that.” 

“Yes, Mother, he got up. And, oh, he won’t for- 
give me. He’ll never forgive me. But he shouldn’t 
anyway—no, no!” 

“Dionis, why is thee so extravagant? Of course 
he should forgive thee if thee asked him.” 


THE UPPER ROOM Is 


“Yes, I asked him. But he can’t. He kicked me 
and hated me.’’ Dionis sat up blinking. “I’m glad 
he kicked me, I wish he had kicked me worse.” 

“Dionis Coffyn,” said her mother with great 
solemnity, “listen to me. Forgiveness is not with 
that boy. It is not with me, nor even with Grand- 
father. Thee knows—surely thee knows—forgive- 
ness is with God.” 

Dionis looked up shrinking. 

“Lay thy sin before the Lord. He will forgive 
and not another. Will thee do that, Dionis, at once? 
I will leave thee alone here.”’ 

Ah, it was upon her again. That busy invisible 
world which impinged so close upon New England 
life—the world of heaven and the spirit. Some 
minds close like a trap at a problem of mathe- 
matics. Dionis’s mind closed upon these religious 
phrases which were in everyone’s mouth. “Lay thy 
sin before the Lord,” ‘‘Enter into the Silence,” 
“Follow the Light.” 

What did it all mean? She could not even form 
questions about them, much less experience them. 
They were all one foggy puzzle, but she was ex- 
pected to understand these experiences. Every New 
England child was expected to understand them. 

Dencey’s uplifted face showed only daunting. 

“Now, Dionis, I will not have thee obstinate.” 
Lydia thought enviously of her sister’s child, Hope< 


20 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


still, who never gave one hour of religious anxiety. 
“Mother is pleading with thee. Lay thy sin before 
the Lord—yes, before it is too late.” 

“But I don’t want ” Dionis began, but 
sharply closed her lips upon the sacrilege. 

“What was thee about to say?” demanded 
Lydia. “Tell me. Speak out.” 

“T can’t, Mother.” 

“Obey me at once!” 

“T don’t want God to forgive me. I want that 
boy to forgive me. I didn’t hit God with a stone.” 

“Thee did. That’s just the point, Dionis, thee 
did.” 

But, as Lydia was speaking, a Bible phrase “was 
opened to her,” as so often happened with those 
who knew whole books by heart. “First reconcile 
thyself to thy brother and then... .” She sighed 
with puzzlement. 

“Perhaps thee is right. Thee says such strange 
things sometimes. There—I will take thee to the 
boy myself, and thee shall ask him. Then will thee 
pray? Will thee?” 

Dionis leaped to her feet, almost forgetting to 
answer. How her dark little face could change in a 
moment! 

“Yes, yes!” But while she was saying it, she was 
already running to the press and taking out her 
bonnet. Lydia could not but be touched at her 
eagerness. After all, it was only forgiveness the 


THE UPPER ROOM 21 


child wanted. Lydia had not intended to go so 
_ promptly, but 

“TI will get my bonnet too,” she said kindly. She 
turned toward the door, but that moment it was 
burst open by the little maid, Peggy Runnel. 

“Oh, Lydia, come quick!” she cried. (Titles of 
respect were absent from Quaker address.) ‘“ Mar- 
tha White’s been took somethin’ awful, an’ they’re 
hollerin’ over the side fence for thee to come.” 

“But she was well—a half hour ago. I saw 

“But—but’’—stammered Peggy, tripping over 
her tongue with news—“‘the crier’s been callin’ out 
on State Street that the Rachel’s sighted. An’ John, 
he come runnin’ home an’ took the spyglass, an’ 
run up to the Walk, he did. An’ he seen her right 
off close to the bar, an’ her flag at half mast. An’ 
what does John do, he comes runnin’ down an’ 
calls to his mother, ‘The Rachel's in an’ her flag half 
mast.’ And Martha, she just says, ‘It’s Henry,’ 
an’ p’r’aps it is, too, sence he’s capting. An’ they 
can’t git her outen her faint.”’ 

Lydia was pale, for she loved Martha White. But 
her manner was not unquieted; it was, however, 
swift. “Dionis, I am sorry, I cannot go now.” 

“Oh—oh.” Dionis dared not voice her disap- 
pointment save in this breathless word. Even 
Dionis hardly ever answered back, it simply was not 
done. 

Now the ringing bell, the long sonorous call of 


39 


22 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


the crier came up from the street, “The brig Rachel. 
Just behind the bar. Flag half mast!” and the run- 
ning feet along the street. 

“Has thee no pity for Martha?” said Lydia, 
shocked. 

But Dionis snatched off her bonnet with little 
grace. As she did so, her black mane of hair came 
tumbling down about her face. She glimpsed it in 
the mirror, a startling sight, and with it the old 
bitter questions flashed unbidden to her tongue. 

“Mother, am I a nigger-face? Am I adopted and 
not thy very own? Did thee get me off a Portugee 
ship, Mother?”’ 

Lydia was struck dumb! The frivolousness of it, 
the heartlessness of such a question at this time. 
She flushed deep with anger, stood with com- 
pressed lips until the flush faded. Then she spoke: 

“Dionis, I believe thee has been mocking me all 
this while. Now, go to thy bed at once. And stay 
there without dinner. Grandfather shall punish 
thee. I must find some way to teach thee to be less 
heartless and wicked than thee is.”’ 

Then the door closed and Dionis was alone with 
her sins. 


CHAPTER IV 


FORGIVENESS FOR THE STONE 


od did not easily forget a promise. But the 


events of the next few days were all-absorb- 
ing. 

The mourning flag was indeed for Captain Henry 
White, who had perished miserably of a fever off 
the coast of Chili. Martha White was very quiet, 
saying not a word, but strangely refusing to rise 
from her chair. She sat gazing into space with a 
questioning horror into which no friend could 
break. Her little son Henry, born since his father’s 
departure, sat in her lap, seeming to understand 
by some curious infant cognizance his mother’s 
sorrow. Martha clung to the child with a desperate 
clinging. Only when tending him did her face 
lighten a little from its gloom. Then the babe 
sickened. Lydia helped nurse him night and day. 
But he slipped away from their arms. 

23 


24 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“God took him ’cause He saw it was something 
for me to love,” said Martha, and no persuasion 
could make her recede from this. 

Then Martha too fell ill. 

Martha White’s suffering cut Lydia to the heart. 
No hours were too many to devote to her. Day and 
night she kept by her side. No one but Lydia could 
make the patient take her slender meals. No one 
but Lydia could break up the long hours of rest- 
lessness and suffering and quiet her to sleep. 

Meanwhile, Dionis lived through the endless day 
in her room, lived through her grandfather’s labored 
reproof and switching, and worst of all, the re- 
turn to school. The event of Captain White’s death 
and his widow’s sorrow were all outside her con- 
sciousness. It is hard to realize how dim is grief to 
the child who has never known it. Dionis was not 
allowed to go into Martha White’s chamber. In- 
deed, would have shrunk from it, in any case. Be- 
sides, her own deed and wickedness covered her 
whole horizon. All life was changed and the aspect 
of it. 

On her walks to school she looked anxiously up 
street and lane for the boy Jetsam. Heretofore, she 
had often met him, but now he came no more. 
_ Perhaps he was dead. That picture of him crouch- 
ing on the ground clutching his bleeding shoulder 
repeated itself again and again in her mind. Some- 
times it awoke her at night, sometimes passed 


FORGIVENESS FOR THE STONE 25 


cloud-like between her and her spelling book. And 
sometimes the picture evolved others. 

She saw him laid out wrapped in a white shroud. 
She had seen Martha White’s little Henry lying 
that way—so quiet, so strangely removed, though 
near. Now she followed Jetsam to his grave. Then, 
as often as not, resurrected him to go through the 
story in a different way. 

“What is thee thinking of?’ Hopestill would 
query. “I’ve asked thee a question twice, and thee 
doesn’t answer.” 

No, for had she not been at Jetsam’s bedside 
holding his hand? Already he was quite changed— 
a saintly and beautiful Jetsam, who said solemnly, 
“T forgive thee, Dencey Coffyn. I forgive thee.” 
And he would let no one smooth his pillow and 
bring him a cup of water but Dencey. She was like 
her mother at Mrs. White’s bedside, necessary, be- 
loved, waited-for. 

Then upon these glowing imaginings burst the 
plan—the clearing, dream-shattering plan. 

She would go out to Injun Jill’s cottage and find 
Jetsam—not in dream but in actuality. With her 
own proper voice she would ask his forgiveness and 
get it. Mother was too busy to go. By the same 
token, Mother would not notice her absence. The 
thing did not bear delay. 

Real adventure was here, palpitating, absorbing. 
It led her on like a half-told tale. The going must be 


26 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


secret. After school was the best time. Instead of 
coming home, she could go to Aunt Lovesta’s and 
from there to Injun Jill’s. Injun Jill’s cottage was 
out on the Commons near Rotten Pumpkin Pond. 
Dionis had glimpsed it from afar, when she went to 
Farmer Brown’s. It was not a near nor an easy 
place. So much the better! 

And she must take with her some atoning gift. 
She had lamed Jetsam for life—she was sure of 
that much. What gift could make that even? In 
her room was a sea trunk which had belonged to 
Grandfather. Children of sailors inherit such cast- 
off romance. The little hairy calfskin thing which 
had traveled three oceans, escaping by hand’s- 
breadth from pirate and shipwreck, now held the 
treasure gatherings of a little girl. 

There was a humming bird which by some mira- 
cle did not smell, but had wind-dried. If you turned 
it about, its neck was now a solemn deepening blue 
and now a startling fire—marvelous, and so ten- 
derly small. There was a tarantula’s nest from 
Brazil, which looked like a lump of clay, but had a 
tiny hinged door which revealed within a pure white 
room. 

Then there was the ammonite. 

Dionis, leaning over her treasures, picked this 
up and held it in a caressing palm. Father had 
brought her this all the way from some South 
Pacific island. He had slit it in halves, showing all 


FORGIVENESS FOR THE STONE 27 


the chambers within. ‘The Chambered Nautilus” 
had not yet been written, but the shell needed no 
human interpreter to speak the poetic act which it 
held in form. The outside was engraved with a 
flower. Father always made flowers on his scrim- 
shont work: 

She gazed at the ammonite a moment. The most 
precious thing of all. Then she laid it in her lunch 
basket. Yes, she would take that. 

Then she went to school. 

Oh, the length of that day at school! Debby, the 
teacher, must have known that Dionis was plan- 
ning something wicked. For, every: time she looked 
up, Debby’s eye was upon her. And Dionis spelt 
concentration with sh and conscience with a k. Of 
course, Debby rapped her knuckles for that. Even 
helping the little ones was no joy to-day. The school 
was run on the new Lancastrian plan, and, young as 
she was, Dionis had yet younger children to care for 
and instruct. She had brought her only book, 
Pilgrim’s Progress, tc show the children, and let 
them spell the littlest words. But she could not 
interest them to-day. At lunch hour she could eat 
nothing for excitement. 

At last the last lesson was said, the last sum 
added, and the class stood in a circle in the middle 
of the floor. Clara Gardner shifted her feet, Bobby 
coughed, then choked it, Sally giggled and clapped 
her hand over her mouth. Debby, the teacher, stood 


28 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


resting her hands together, as she always did, 
grimly waiting. At last all sounds died into an 
utter, utter silence. Then Hopestill, who had been 
the best child for the day, lifted her hand high and 
let drop a pin! 

It struck the bare floor and was heard. ‘So still 
you could hear a pin drop.” That was the necessity. 

Then clatter, clatter of stout little copper-toed 
shoes, finding of bonnets and hats, pinning on of 
shawls. and Dionis was free. 


CHAPTER V 


OUT ON THE COMMONS 


| ees sped along the narrow lanes. What 


a sense of freedom—flying toward a goal. 

She would find Jetsam at last, get his for- 
giveness. That awful sense of anger against her- 
self—she would dispel it now. 

There on the hill, the four clattering windmills 
gestured against the sky. Only one of them was 
not working, because the miller was “turning it into 
the wind,” swinging around the whole top of it by 
means of the down-stretched spar which the weary 
old horse was dragging. They were almost like 
ships, these mills. 

She passed Mill Hill and stepped at once into 
the clean, open heart of the world. 

The Commons swept away grandly from the 
place of her feet. Hollows flowed down into reverent 
shadow, heights lifted themselves in softening dis- 

29 


30 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


tances, and beyond all a glimpse of intense blue 
showed the circle of the sea. Dionis caught her 
breath. Her thoughts became light and drifted out 
into space. A good fortune was Dencey’s. Whatever 
gloom might invade her from without, the ways of 
her mind were ways of pleasantness. She hurried for- 
ward on the rut-road. To-day was a “dry north- 
easter,’ the clearest weather in Nantucket. Far 
out on the plains were little white tufts of thistle- 
down. Those were the sheep, hundreds and hun- 
dreds of them that had to be sheared in the spring 
when they had the Shearing Festival. In the dis- 
tance was a toy house so small she could put it in 
her basket, a magic thing which only people tiny 
as birds could live in. But as Dionis trudged and 
trudged the house suddenly swelled life-size, and 
she had to acknowledge that it was Farmer Brown’s. 

Gracious—where was she? Dionis suddenly came 
back to earth with her dreams in shreds. She was 
all alone and the wide Commons about her every- 
where. Here in the silence they seemed to have a 
mood like a thoughtful yet sleeping face. 

Dencey gazed about her. Far over to the right, 
half submerged by the flowing lines of hills, she saw 
Injun Jill’s cottage. Dencey’s sombre mission came 
back—a flip of bat’s wings. 

She was afraid of Injun Jill. Every child in the 
school was afraid of her, and ran from her in the 
streets. But how much better to meet her in the 


OUT ON THE COMMONS 331 


street than out here in this wide loneliness. The 
boys said she was a witch, and Dionis tried not to 
believe it. And Jetsam! Oh, why had she ever 
thought he would forgive her? Hadn’t he kicked 
her and sworn at her and done nothing else? 

Her unwilling feet dragged and dragged her 
closer to the cabin. Now it stood out, bare and dis- 
mal. Oh, if she only had some shelter. Why, she 
could be seen for miles. And what if Injun Jill 
came out! Only an enormous purpose kept her 
going. But at the outskirts of the place she stopped. 
She could not make herself knock at the door. 
Jetsam must be in there, lying on his bed. Maybe 
he was unconscious. How dead the windows looked, 
and how gruesome Rotten Pumpkin Pond beside 
the house. 

Suddenly the wide silence was broken by a 
sound—blanketed in distance, chop, chop, chop! 
There was a rise beyond the house. Someone was 
chopping on the farther side of it. With pounding 
heart, Dionis passed the house and climbed the hill- 
zop. In the hollow below was a stretch of scrub pine. 
The little tortured trees were sheared atop as level 
as a hedge. Thus high could they grow in the hill’s 
protection; then the sharp sea winds sheared them. 

The chopping was there. Perhaps the woodman 
would help her and take her to Injun Jill. 

Soft as a cat, Dencey crept down to the woods, 
peered in, and saw—— 


32 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Not a man at all, but Jetsam himself, erect on 
his feet, alive and well. Some Power better than her 
own had brought all her evil to naught. A warm 
radiance swept Dencey. She stood looking from her 
covert at the comforting sight. 

He was felling one of the trees, the wounded 
shoulder doing its part with health and precision. 
He was whistling a gay but tuneless whistle. How 
dirty his shirt was. The very same shirt Dencey 
had seen before, the very same rents and tears. 

Beside him, among the chips, a dog sat gazing 
up at him. 

Suddenly this dog wheeled, bristling on all fours, 
then sprang like a bolt into the thicket and upon 
Dencey. She screamed with terror, clutching her 
basket in front of her. for the dog’s paws were on her 
chest. 

The boy banged down his ax and came running. 

“Hey, Wash! Down I say!” 

He seized the dog by the neck, pulling and strug- 
gling. Then he was aware of Dionis. 

“Tarnation to it! If it ain’t that little she-divil 
agin. What ye doin’ hyar?”’ 

Dionis was utterly speechless. She hadn’t her 
breath yet, anyway. And to explain her sacred 
errand was impossible in this confusion. 

““Whad ye want?’ demanded Jetsam, threaten- 
ing. “Throw some more stones, will ye, will ye?” 

“Oh, no, no. I came—I came——”’ 


OUT ON THE COMMONS 33 


“T’ll show ye. Slippin’ up on me like a doggone 
thief!” 

The intrusion of her coming at all broke upon 
Dionis with profound embarrassment. As for Jet- 
sam, he was piqued for his woodland skill. No 
woodsman save a dead one would have let an in- 
truder come so close. 

“Did ye come to see Injun Jill?” 

“No, to see thee.” 

“Don’t ye go to thee’in’ me. I kin knock ye down 
if I wantter.” 

This ungallant deed was prevented by Wash. He 
broke away from his master with little short yelps. 

“Come back, darn ye!”’ quoth the boy irritably. 
“Ye don’t hev to be chawin’ up an spittin’ out 
everybody what comes.” 

But the dog pawed the basket, wiggling his nose. 

“Ye’ve got meat in that thar, I reckon,” said 
Jetsam. “Wash hain’t hed no meat, not fer a month. 
Tain’t right fer a dog, eatin’ apples an’ sich. He’ll 
lose his stren’th.”’ 

Jetsam seemed voicing some old grievance. 

“But I have got meat,’ exclaimed Dionis. 
“Wash can have it.” 

She fished busily in her basket and held out the 
meat. Wash swallowed it at one gulp—almost her 
hand as well. 

The dog was pleased, but the boy was crosser 
than ever. 


34 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“That thar hain’t fittin’ fer a dog,” he com- 
plained. “That was human vittles. Roast lamb. 
What ye gin him that fer?”’ 

“J—I thought thee wanted me to,” whimpered 
Dionis. 

Irritability was so unknown to her well-ordered 
home that it was both surprising and painful. 

“T’ve got some pie,” she ventured. “It’s mince.” 
For Peggy, that morning, no doubt, instructed by 
some god, had filled Dencey’s basket to the brim. 

Jetsam’s eyes glittered. He swallowed hard. 

“T don’t want yer pie. I hain’t no beggar,” he 
said. 

“But Injun Jill begs for thee,’ 
right Quakeress. 

“She don’t nuther. She’s been drunk, anyway, 
fer a week.” 

“But she gets your dinner just the same, doesn’t 
she?”” Whoever heard of the daily routine of the 
household being broken? 

“No, she don’t—lying thar in bed like a ole 
hawg. Anyways, drunk or sober, her cookin’s a 
cussed mess.” 

The resentment, the loathing of the whole week 
were in Jetsam’s tone. Again Dionis recoiled. But 
had she come on this far adventure to be beaten by 
a swear? I trow not! 

“T’ll tell thee,” she said brightly. “T’ll eat one 
bite and thee eat the next.” 


’ said the down- 


OUT ON THE COMMONS 35 


She lifted out the pie, all flaky crust and black 
plumminess. She daintily bit off the nose of the 
wedge and handed it. Jetsam took one huge bite, 
then another—and another with hasty gulps. 
Dionis was taken aback. In her set, the sacred 
alternation once promised was strictly adhered to. 

“Thee eats just as bad as Wash,’ she com- 
mented. 

“TY don’t nuther. Anyways, eatin’s eatin’, hain’t 
itt). 

“No, it isn’t. If we should eat like cats and dogs, 
pretty soon we'd be ’em!” 

This bit of evolutionary wisdom was from Peggy. 

The boy’s face glowered. Quaker truth-telling is 
often trying. 

Oh, dear, she had made him angry again, and 
she was no nearer asking him to forgive her than 
she had been in the first place. Could she say it 
now—just bare and flat out? She hid her face, pre- 
tending to look in her basket. Oho!—she had for- 
gotten the ammonite. She took it out reverently. 
Her voice was soft. 

“TJ want to give thee this.” 

“What, now! Oh, I can’t eat that.”’ 

Dionis laughed at this sally. 

“No, but look,” she turned the enchased surface 
with its white veil-thin flower on the pink back- 
ground, a true shell cameo. Pride was in her gesture. 

“Father carved it just for me. It’s a flower he 


36 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


found in Callao. First he made a picture of it in the 
log book, so as to get it accurate.” (A fine word that 
though quoted.) “For it’s a Holy Ghost flower. See 
the dove in the center?” 

Jetsam stared. “Wha’d I do with it?” he de- 
manded. 

“Keep it. It’s beautiful.” 

“But hit’s just a shell. Shells hain’t no good. 
Even the sea spits ’em out all over the beaches.” 

Was Dencey going to fail after all? 

“Oh, but this one—just look.” In a kind of des- 
peration, Dionis forced the shell into his dirty 
hands. 

“T don’t want it, I tell ye,” he said. “Say, what’s 
the matter with ye, anyway?”’ 

“Il want thee—" Dionis faltered at the word 
—“to forgive me.’ 

“Forgive?” he seemed scarcely to understand the 
word. “What fer?”’ 

“For hitting thee with—with that stone.” 

The angry memory rushed back into the boy’s 
face. 

“T guess ye won’t pay fur that with no durned 
shell,” he said. “‘Thar!’’ 

And he flung the ammonite hard against a tree, 
where it broke into fragments. 

“Oh—oh—oh!”’ 

Dionis cried out as if he had broken herself. She 
dashed after the shell, picking up the pieces with 


OUT ON THE COMMONS 37 


cold fumbling fingers. She was too amazed to cry, 
too horrified for anger. It couldn’t be vanished, this 
thing she had treasured for years. Jetsam viewed 
her with fine indifference. 

“Tl pay ye fur hittin’ me in the street,” he 
swaggered. “A girl. I reckon no girl'll hit me agin.” 

But Dionis did not hear him. She was putting the 
delicate fragments back into her basket. To find 
place for them, she took out all her books. 

At sight of the books, the boy leaned forward in 
tense eagerness. He reached out his hands. Web- 
ster’s Spelling Book, Young Ladies’ Accidence—he 
went hastily through these, fluttering the leaves. 
Then Pilgrim’s Progress. At this he paused, bend- 
ing over it, closely gazing at the picture of Pilgrim 
and his burden. Then he looked up. An expression 
of eerie cunning crossed his face, made it almost 
pixy-like. 

“Gimme this!” he said sharply. “Ef ye’re so 
crazy to gimme suthin’, gimme this hyar book.” 

Dencey turned and gasped. Her Pilgrim’s Prog- 
ress—the one and only book that was her very 
own. This was so intimate a thing that giving it 
had not occurred to her. 

**Not—not that one,” she faltered. 

But the sense of her wrong-doing was strong upon 
her. She must pay—must pay. She had known that 
from the beginning. Had she not heard of the 
“wages of sin’? 


38 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 

“Yes,’”’ she answered breathlessly. “Thee can 
have it.”” But at the words something caught her 
throat with terrible pain. 

Jetsam sat bending over the book, turning the 
leaves, not pausing at any, with the busy curiosity 
of a monkey. He had not even thanked her. To 
Dionis, the whole situation became suddenly sordid. 
Jetsam and his dirty, dirty shirt, Jetsam and the 
cabin over the hill, where Injun Jill lay drunk “like 
a hawg.”’ She had come out to ask for forgiveness, 
but Jetsam had only broken her ammonite, and 
now had snatched from her her precious Pilgrim’s 
Progress. And he was hating her while he read it. 
Hating—hating still. 

“T guess I should have asked God after all,” she 
muttered. 

Jetsam peered up. 

“What ye cryin’ fur?” he ieeenned 

“T’m not cryin’, I’m breathin’,” she answered. 

“Ye air cryin’ too. Say, looky hyar. Ef ye like 
yer book so much, why did ye give it to me?” 

““Be—because I hurt thee.” 

“Huh!” he grunted. “Ye think yerself awful 
smart, hurtin’ folks.” 

She didn’t. She did not think herself smart. 
But how was she to tell him? In a kind of blank- 
ness, Dionis lifted her basket and slowly went back 
along the path over the hill. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS 


] ) sex stumbled along, frankly crying. 


Strange how much longer the way seemed 

now. The wind had changed. The sky had 
dimmed, and all the hills and hollows gone gray. 
She wished the path were plainer. Here, where 
the barren heath was so thick a carpet, there was 
no path at all. Thee had to trace it as best thee 
could, there on the farther rise. What if she got lost! 
She had a deep sense of the ugliness she had seen, a 
strange intimation, such as sometimes comes to 
children, of the cruelty of the world which is yet all 
unknown, all to be lived through. 

She had gone a good way when, suddenly, she 
stopped to listen. Something, yes, steps following 
her. She began to run, but the steps gained. They 
were running too. At last, for very terror, she looked 
around. 

It was Jetsam. Oh, what would he do to her 

39 


40 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


now! But, try as she might, he was soon up with 
her. 

“Hyar,” he said, thrusting at her her precious 
Pilgrim’s Progress. “Take it. I don’t want it. It 
hain’t no good to me.” 

But Dionis was not one who, having put hand 
to the plow, looketh back. The sacrifice was com- 
pleted. It was not for naught that she had an ances- 
tress who had been whipped at a cart’s-tail through 
three towns to make her recant. She pushed the 
book from her. 

“Tt’s thine now.” 

“Hit’s no good to me. I tell ye, I can’t make no 
head nor tail o’ the thing.”’ There was no kindness in 
the giving back, a furious bafflement, rather, whick 
Dionis did not understand. 

“T won’t take it, so there,’ 
away. 

But Jetsam still walked with her—that is, 
abreast of her, on the other side of the rut-road, 
silently, doggedly. Dionis glanced over at him in 
puzzlement, and still they went on. 

The pretty town came into sight, etched on the 
horizon like a picture, the windmills wheeling 
against the sky, the golden-topped tower which 
always looks brightest against a gray sky. 

Suddenly Jetsam broke silence. 

“Kin ye read?” 


é) 


she said, hurrying 


THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS — 41 


“Of course I can. Ever since before Father went 
away.” 

“TI spose ye spells the letters and then says the 
words,” he ventured. 

“TI do not. I read like talking—straight along. 
I’m not a baby.” 

Quickly Jetsam crossed the road, opening the 
book as he came. 

“Then read it,’ he demanded. ‘‘Thar. Read it 
right thar.” 

The book had fallen open at a habitual page. 
Dionis looked down. “‘So Pilgrim went on and 
Apollyon met him.’”’ 

Dencey’s fancy took fire at the words. She could 
never read this page without chills of fear and shiv- 
ers of delight. 

““«**Whence come you and whither are you 
bound?”’” 

She read the fiend’s question with all the dire- 
fulness that was in it. 

Then her voice rang out the answer. 

**«**T come from the City-of Destruction, and I 
am going to the City of Zion.”’” 

On she went through the terrible battle, man 
against foul fiend. She hardly knew she was read- 
ing. It was reality. Dencey’s bonnet nodded the 
rhythm, for she knew it like a song. They stood 
close together, these two children of stern old New 


42 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


England, absorbed in New England’s book of 
Power. 

“<Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole 
breadth of the way, and said, “‘ Prepare thyself to 
die, for I swear, by my infernal den—Here I will 
spill thy soul.”’” 

“‘Lordy—he’s a goner,”’ breathed Jetsam. 

But Dionis was quite unconscious of Jetsam. 
She read on to the victory: 

“And Christian made at him again, saying, 
“Nay, in all these things we are more than con- 
querors Romans seven thirty-seven.’ And with that 
Apollyon spread forth his dragon wings and sped 
him away James four seven.’”’ 

Bible references and all she read in the same 
triumphant voice, and handed the book back to 
its owner. Jetsam crossed over to the other side 
of the road and without a word began his steady 
| forward tramp. 

“Humph!”’ Dionis heard him grunt, Indian-like. 
“Humph!” The admiration was patent, and Dionis 
began to glow. But at the third “humph”’ the boy 
stopped. His chin went down on his chest. His whole 
body drooped. 

“J kain’t read,” he blurted out. “Not a durned 
word.” 

The shame of the confession showed in every line 
of him. Dionis felt shamed too, as if, somehow, she 
were to blame. It couldn’t be that this great boy, 


THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS — 43 


as big as she, could not read. She felt as she did 
that day when she found stern old Grandfather 
sobbing over Henry White’s death. 

These things were most upsetting. 

“But thee can learn,” she said hastily. ‘Thee 
has the book now.” 

“Not the way ye kin,” was the wrathful response. 

Dionis crossed over to him and opened the book 
again. “Look,” she said. “The z’s always have dots 
and the 2z’s are crossed like that and the o’s are 
round like a hoople. And that, right there,” she 
pointed with her slender brown finger—‘‘is Apol- 
lyon. Now thee knows three letters and one word.” 

He stood peering close at the book, then in de- 
spair: 

“TI kain’t do it. I kain’t. I tried out thar hard, 
and I kain’t.” 

An intense desire took hold of Dionis to fix all 
this. 

“I could teach thee,” she said. “Yes, I could.” 

“Teach me!” he repeated. “Larn me to read? 
Ye?” He looked at her without the least hope. 

“Yes, I teach the little ones in school.” 

“But would yer mother let ye?”’ he inquired. 

Here was a stunner. No self-respecting mother in 
Nantucket would let her child associate with Sam- 
mie Jetsam—especially a girl. 

Jetsam himself answered. “No, she wouldn’t, 
she wouldn’t.”’ 


44 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Still he stood there. 

“But ye could,” he asserted suddenly. ‘‘ Ye could 
do it. Hit would take a long while, but ye could. 
Look hyar,” he added abruptly, “I hain’t forgive ye 
yet: 

“Dear me!” Dionis had forgotten all about for- 
giveness. It came back with a pang. 

“But, looky hyar, you gal. Ef ye teach me to 
read I will forgive ye. I will. Not afore, mind ye. 
Not afore, but when I kin read like you kin.” 

“But I’m the best reader in the whole school.” 

“All right, then. Not quite so good as ye read, 
but good enough. Will ye do it?”’ 

She hesitated. The difficulties were enormous 
What would Mother say? Dared she disobey? 

“All right, then,” said Jetsam bitterly. “I won’t 
forgive ye.” 

“Yes, [ll do it,” she promised. 

“Cross yer heart and double D?”’ 

“T don’t make vain oaths, Sam Jetsam, but I 
will.” 

He searched her face. 

“When will ye begin? To-morrow?” 

“After school, I can,’ she breathed anxiously. 

“All right. Then ye come out hyar beyond the 
windmills. Do ye heed me?” He began to plan with 
sudden animation. “Do ye see that thar little pine 
and then further out Brown’s house?”’ 

“Yes,” she said, wondering. 


THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS —§ 45 


“Well, ye walk along this hyar road until that 
pine tree comes right front o’ Brown’s house. Then 
ye’ve got yer bearin’s and stop. An’ I’ll meet ye.” 

“But suppose it’s foggy and I can’t see Farmer 
Brown’s.”’ 

“Then ye’ll have to come by dead reckonin’,” 
he conceded. 

“Would the old Walden pig-pen be dead reckon- 
*?” she queried. 

“T guess so. But pig-pens hain’t so good as bear- 
in’s. Now, don’t ye forgit. To-morrow.” 

Without a word of good-bye, he turned and 
walked away. His determined little figure trudged 
into the distance up the farther rise, still clutching 
his book. Clutching her too, Dionis seemed to feel, 
as she watched him go. Making her do what he 


would. 


in 


BOOK TWO 


CHAPTER VII 


THE FORMER TIME 


LY Ven the white fire of New England life 
sprang up along the Massachusetts coast, 
a spark of it blew far out to sea and be- 
came—Nantucket. 

Here was to be seen, as in a diminishing glass, a 
tiny New England, delicately outlined—intensified 
—in a word, islanded. Here were the New England 
character and hardihood, its God-fearing and 
mental eagerness, yet all sensitively changed, in- 
dividualized, so that they became Nantucket and 
no other. Instead of the stony fields of New Eng- 
land, the Nantucketers plowed the wide ocean, and 
at this period of their history, their harvest was 
gathered from pole to pole. By its industry, this 
low, sandy island, eighteen miles long, produced 
enough whale oil to light half the cities of the 
world, including London. 

Clearly defined smallness on the one hand, world 

49 


50 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


wideness on the other, made the Nantucket life 
different from all others. 

The legend of Nantucket’s founding is a twice- 
told tale, but it is so true to the character of the 
Island as always to need retelling. How Thomas 
Macey of Salisbury, Massachusetts, gave shelter 
overnight to three fleeing Quakers, how for this act 
of humanity he was fined, questioned, and hectored 
by the Puritan authorities, until the New England 
in him rose in wrath against New England; and 
taking an open boat, he, with two others, put out 
for the small island off the coast. All Puritanism 
was a protest, but Nantucket was a protest against 
protest. 

Later on, mainly through the inspiration of one 
powerful woman, Mary Starbuck, Nantucket be- 
came almost entirely Quaker. Imagine it, the tiny 
gray island clothing itself in gray, unafraid of 
austerity because of the colorful spirit within. 

In this little and complete world, the Coffins had 
lived since 1660. At one time there were five hun- 
dred persons of the name of Coffin living on the 
Island—“‘not countin’ the Coffin family that wa’n’t 
real Coffins”’—that line being founded by a Portu- 
guese cabin boy whom a Coffin captain adopted. 

Tom Coffyn was, needless to say, of the genuine 
variety. He spelled his name with a y as did the 
first Coffyn founder. He it was who afterward was 
to become Dionis’s father. Lydia Severance, 


THE FORMER TIME 51 


afterward her mother, had always lived there, 
she and her ancestors before her. 

Their meeting was at meeting. 

To say that they first met there is hardly true, 
for they had seen each other, as all Island young 
folk did, at sheep-shearing, at corn-huskings, or 
passing in the street. But Tom Coffyn was of the 
First Congregationalist Church and Lydia Sever- 
ance of the Friends’ Meeting on Pleasant Street. 
So they went to different schools, and the youthful 
acquaintance was slight. Love at first sight, then, 
this encounter might be called, a thing not unusual 
in Nantucket, where happy meetings followed the 
four-year loneliness of the whaling voyage. From 
such a voyage Tom Coffyn had just returned when 
on that First Day morning he chose to go to Quaker 
meeting with his voyage comrade, Caleb Severance. 

Into the gray room filed the gray and silent peo- 
ple, the women on one side, the men on the other, 
with certain honorable ones facing the meeting from 
a row of higher benches. The room was perfectly 
bare save for the candlesticks set at intervals along 
the walls. The large windows let in all the glare. 
Only this morning a poplar, golden with autumn, 
standing outside in the sunlight, threw its glory 
into the place and filled the gray room with a spell 
of gold. 

Tom did not at all recognize the maiden who 
seated herself third from the aisle in the fifth row. 


52 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


She must be from Rhode Island or perhaps the 
“Continent.” There she sat among the drab and 
quiet sisterhood. “‘Heavens!”’ thought Tom, “how 
futile to dress the women all alike when one can 
shine out from the rest so star-like and distinguish- 
ed.”” He must have forgotten in the long four-year 
glimpses of heathen women how beautiful a woman 
could be, how wide-set and sweet her gray eyes, 
how rosy and demure her mouth. In what way 
Tom managed to see all this across the straight- 
seated rows is a mystery. But he did so manage. 
The Quaker silence began. So many people sit- 
ting together not communicating with each by any 
word, but waiting—waiting for something outside 
of themselves. There was awe in the silent room. 
Obedience made visible. Tom could hear the poplar 
rustling softly in the sea wind. And once a solitary 
pedestrian passed in the street, was heard from far, 
coming, and his footsteps persisted a great dis- 
tance toward town. Still the Quakers sat. Gracious, 
that girl was beautiful, with her downcast eyes 
and folded hands. There seemed an actual light in 
her face. Tom decided that he approved of this 
Quaker silence. Was there always such happiness 
in it? he wondered. The Divine love was played 
upon by a tender human dawning until both were 
roseate together. Now he saw the girl sway in her 
seat—ever so slightly, like a flower in a breath of 


THE FORMER TIME 53 


wind. Her hands moved, she blushed slowly red. 
By Jove, he had been staring. He must stop it. 

But the honored ones who faced the meeting 
knew well the signs of one whom the Spirit moves. 
Lydia Severance had never spoken in meeting be- 
fore. A faint stir of expectation could just be felt 
in the deeps of meditation. 

Lydia rose, swaying flower-like as before, her 
hands, touching the rail in front of her, passed back 
and forth softly as willow branches touching the 
grass. Then, startlingly upon the silence, her voice 
began—an inner voice, nothing earthly about it. 
Ah, surely she was “in the Spirit.” 

“T feel drawings in my mind to thank Thee, O 
Lord, for the return of the White Wave. Lord, only 
Thou didst bring her out of the stormy seas and 
cruel hurricane. Only Thou didst know the pre- 
ciousness of her souls to bring them home.” 

The White Wave! Tom’s own ship. But this was a 
miracle. Why on earth was she doing it? What was 
she saying? 

Her speech was not speech but chanting. All of 
the sentences on one tone save the last word, which 
dropped strangelyto almost a tone below. Then, sud- 
denly, a sentence began a delicate third higher, as 
though some new impulse of the Spirit had sent it 
up, and slowly drooped again to the original chant- 
ing tone. Singing, no less! Exquisite music denied 


54 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


by the rigid creed of their sect, yet finding its way 
unmarked to their very holy of holies. 

And all her chanting was of the White Wave and 
her return from perilous seas. 

Tom was lost in wonder. Like a flickering light, 
her blessings ran from bow to stern of the ship, from 
keel to masthead. At her touch, the sordid things 
grew sacred—the filthy ports they had made and es- 
caped from, the storms they had ridden out swear- 
ing at the bitter effort, the very whales they had 
caught—all these were, somehow, in her prayer. 

As the meeting broke up with shaking of hands 
and solemn greetings, Tom pulled his comrade’s 
arm. 

“Who is that wonderful girl over there—fifth 
row?” Why, his voice was actually trembling! 

“That one with the brown eyes?” asked Caleb. 
“Abigail Folger—yes, she’s is 

“Heavens, no! The gray-eyed one—the one who 
spoke.” 

“Oh, that one! Lydia, my sister.” 

Even yet, Tom thought the “speech” was for 
him. “Then I know her,” he exclaimed. 

Without more word, he shouldered his way across 
and caught up with her at the door. He put out his 
hand. The golden poplar was not brighter than his 
smile. 

“‘Good-morning, Miss Lydia Do you know who 
I am?” he asked. 


THE FORMER TIME 55 


“Yes. Tom Coffyn. But thee didn’t know me at 
first.” 

“How did you know I didn’t? You must have 
been looking at me in meeting.” 

The rogue! He was delighted with the confusion 
this caused under the Quaker bonnet. 

“May I walk home with you?” he pleaded. ‘‘I’d 
like to very much.” 

“It’s quite out of thy way,” she began. 

“No, it isn’t. Your way couldn’t be that for me.” 

Truly a forward youth! 

He did not go into her house that day. Sabbaths, 
or First Days, were not congenial for visiting or 
pleasures. But the next day he called upon her and 
stayed to supper, too. The next day and the next 
he was there. At the husking he sat by Lydia—saw 
no one else in the barn. He even took her to a 
quilting party in the middle of the afternoon. He 
scandalized the Congregationalists by going to 
Quaker meeting three Sabbaths in succession. 

Lydia bloomed like a wild rose under the sudden 
adoration. Bloomed though she spent many prayer- 
ful hours trying to stem the tide that was carrying 
her along. Marrying out of meeting was the 
supreme wrong in Quakerism. She would be dis- 
owned. The sorrow and disgrace of it would spread 
through all her kith and kin. 

“Lydia,” said her mother severely, “how long is 
thee going to accept the attentions of Lias Coffyn’s 


56 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


son? Are there not enough good boys of Friends’ 
Meeting to please thee? Soon I shall have to forbid 
him the house.” 

Lydia tried her best. But what could she do? 
She could not shut the door in Tom’s face—that 
bright and laughing face that seemed to bring 
very sunshine in with it. And if she went down town 
on any errand, he was sure to find her and ac- 
company her home. All too soon came the fateful 
evening. 

All the family and friends were invited to 
Cousin William’s, who had just returned from a 
whaling voyage. Lydia stayed at home for con- 
science’ sake, knowing that Tom would be there. 
She had out her spinning wheel and paced before 
it, holding the outstretched thread in the warm 
firelight. Oh, she was trying to still her thoughts— 
trying not to dream so happily—when the big brass 
knocker knocked on her heart louder than on the 
door. 

Trembling, she opened the door. Of course, it 
was he. 

“You didn’t come to the party,” he said, as they 
came into the room. “I’m glad, for I’d rather see 
you here.” | 

He was scared, too. Mark how his dear hand 
trembled, holding his hat. Why, she had forgot her 
manners. 

“Will thee give me thy hat?” she ventured, with 


THE FORMER TIME 57 


outstretched hand. But he dropped his hat, caught 
her hand in both of his, gazing into her eyes until 
her soul drew out to his. 

And what is he saying? Oh, the dreadful, doom- 
ful words, for Lydia cannot marry out of Meeting, 
throw herself into outer darkness, almost dam- 
nation. It would break Mother’s heart, and, oh 
Father’s wrath when he comes home from sea! 
Impossible—impossible! 

“Oh, no, no!’’—Lydia cries it out with horror 
and shrinking. “I can’t marry you—I can’t.” 

“You don’t love me,” said Tom fatally. “I—I 
never thought you could—an angel like you giving 
yourself—to me.” 

He stooped blindly to pick up his hat—his tall 
best beaver, worn for her sake—even that touched 
her. He would go now, that was best. Why couldn’t 
she keep still? But he must not go. He must not go 
away thinking that lie. 

“T do love thee, Tom. Oh, Tom, I do.”’ 

Then she cannot help it. He has her in his arms, 
sweeping her into heavenly places and spaces. Oh, 
surely it is wrong to kiss like that. For she must 
not marry him. No—no—no! 


: Ua 
Wh H 


e T ee noe 
OVUNNATSAN AGRA aNAA GA AMATARAAAAREAAIATAD... 


it 


CHAPTER Will 


‘*1 CANNOT MARRY OUT OF MEETING” 


Nae this fateful evening, Lydia did not 


even go abroad on the street. She would not 

see Tom when he came to the house, and 
Only the severe Mrs. Severance met him at the 
door. Her brother Caleb was no help. 

“Of course, Lydia’s all right,” he declared. “I 
don’t wonder thee likes her. But she’ll never marry 
out of Meeting—Lydia won’t. She’s the most pious 
of all the family.” 

Tom was desperate. Ten days passed, and he did 
not even see her face. He was sure Mrs. Severance 
took his letters, for he received no answers. Dark- 
ness settled on his soul. He was sure he would 
die. 

Mrs. Severance, looking out at the side window, 
said, with exasperation: 

“There’s that Coffyn boy going by again. I 

58 


“T CANNOT MARRY” 59 
should think he’d be ashamed. He looks as though 


he were condemned to the gallows.” 

And Lydia tangled her thread on the distaff— 
tried and tried to untangle it. But who can un- 
tangle a thread through blinding tears? 

She even stayed home from meeting, for her 
headaches were not feigned. Sorrow and imprison- 
ment are not healthful exercises. But she had to go 
into the garden for the vegetables, and one day, 
Tom, passing along the fenced lane, saw her among 
the pumpkin vines. He leaped over the high fence 
at a bound. He had not climbed the shrouds on the 
high seas for naught. 

Lydia stopped, rooted to > the spot, holding the 
pumpkin like a full moon in her arms. 

“Lydia, how could you!” he cried. “How could 
you hide from me!”’ 

For a moment she could not speak. To see him 
again! It somehow made such a commotion, such a 
glare of happiness. 

“T don’t dare,”’ she whispered. “Oh, Tom, if I 
see thee, I—J——”’ 

“Lydia, I couldn’t throw you over for anything. 
What if I am a Congregationalist? I’d love you if 
you were a Fiji—if you were a—a—oh, heaven, I 
can’t imagine your being anything I wouldn’t love. 
I love you, love you. I'll love you till I die.” 

She closed her eyes, overcome with the sweetness 
and pain of his words. Oh, dear, would he throw 


60 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


his arms about her there in the garden, pumpkin 
and all? But she wanted him to. She longed for him 
just to touch her hand. 

“T’ve told Mother,” she spoke falteringly. “She 
is in deep grief over me. She says the wrong is mine, 
not thine, and it is—it is. They would read me out 
of Meeting. Oh, Tom, why did thee come here?” 

“Lydia, they need not despise me, these Quakers. 
I am a good man, Lydia. At least, I’m not wicked.” 

“Oh, Tom, haven’t I known that from be- 
ginning?” 

“Most people don’t think so,” he acknowledged. 
For Tom’s gayety sat not well in the pious com- 
munity. 

“But I know,” she answered. 

Great heaven, the faith of her. Great heaven, the 
trust of her in him. He’d be good now, if he never 
saw her again. 

“Do you want to break my heart?” he asked. 

She could not answer this. 

“Do you love me, Lydia?” 

Her head bowed and he saw her shoulders quiver, 
though there was no sobbing. 

“You said so once. Won’t you say it again?” 

“Yes, Tom. Oh, yes—yes. But I would be wicked 
to love anyone better than God and the true wor- 
ship of God. And, oh, oh, I must not, I cannot be 
read out of Meeting.” 

“You would be disgraced, of course.” 


“T CANNOT MARRY” 61 


“Yes,” she breathed. 

“Are you quite sure it is not the disgrace that’s 
holding you back? You know that God can be 
truly worshipped anywhere and by any true soul. 
Didn’t your George Fox say something like that? 
Couldn’t you love God and me too, Lydia?” 

Tom had thought out all these arguments. Had 
he not lain awake nights thinking them? It was all 
so clear to him. But well he knew the stone wall of 
Quakerism against which he beat. That stone wall 
was here now. 

He was astonished at the horror with which she 
looked up. The pumpkin slid from her arms down 
to the path. Then she hid her face in her two hands. 

What had he done? Had he offended her so deeply 
as that? | 

But Tom asked none of these questions. They 
faded before he could speak them—faded because, 
somehow, he knew she was suddenly separated 
from him, by a great gulf—a trance of the spirit. 
In his far voyages he had not been farther away 
from her than at this moment. It was all over with 
him. She would never marry him, now. 

Would she never speak to him? Must he go away? 

But now quietly Lydia lifted her head. 

“Thee has shown me my error,” she said in a 
small clear voice. “And the Lord has shown it me 
too. It was pride, not faith, that held me from thee. 
I shall marry thee, Tom Coffyn, whatever comes.” 


62 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


The unexpectedness of it! The dizziness of it! 
Tom seemed to be hurled upward like an arrow 
from black depth into bewildering light. 

“Lydia—you don’t mean ” He stumbled at it 
like an astonished boy. “Lydia, you darling saint!” 

“Tom, oh, thee mustn’t,”’ she protested. “They'll 
see thee from the windows.” 

“Tell them it’s your future husband kissing you,” 
he answered rapturously. 


Tom came to his senses and picked up the pump- 
kin. 

“Shall we go in and tell them?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she answered steadily. But somehow the 
very joy in her eyes showed him the depth of her 
renunciation—the stark courage with which she 
meant to face her kith and kin. 

“You sha’n’t marry me out of Meeting, Lydia,” 
he told her. 

“Yes, I shall. I have decided.” 

“Bless your dear plucky heart. But you’re not 
going to marry me out of Meeting, I tell you, I’m 
a Quaker now. From this moment I’m a Friend.” 

“Tom Coffyn.” She drew away from him. “ How 
dares thee jest at sacred things?” 

“T’m not joking. I’m serious. I’m going to join 
the Quakers.” 

“But thee cannot become a Friend that way, just 
—just for love.” 


“I CANNOT MARRY” 63 


“Why not?” he demanded. 

“Tom, Tom!” she cried in real distress. ‘Thee 
cannot do it to gain an end.” 

“But, Lydia, I’d gained the end beforehand. 
Look here, are you trying to drive me away from 
your faith?” 

Something in his voice touched her with his real 
meaning. Tom had seen her religion in action. 
What did it mean, that deep withdrawal into the 
Unseen and the return with certain knowledge? A 
knowledge so wise, so happy for himself? It was 
real—that thing. It awed him. 

And only think, last night he had made up his 
mind to test Lydia’s love. Let her give up her 
Quakerism, if she loved him. If not—well, Tom had 
been angry. How crude that all seemed now. 

“Yes, I’m a Friend,” he said quietly. “We'll be 
married in Meeting, Lydia.” 


CHAPTER LX. 


THE PERPETUAL FRONTIER 


OM COFFYN’S change of religion was a 
nine-day wonder in Nantucket. Old Elias 


Coffyn said, he’d rather have buried 
Thomas. He stormed and threatened to disown 
him. But the tie between father and son had been 
one of severity, chiefly, and Tom remained loyal 
to his new faith. 

Poor Tom. He little knew the kind of drubbing 
he’d get at the hands of his Quaker hosts. He re- 
ported himself to the Meeting. Then a committee 
waited upon him and questioned his private life till 
he blushed scarlet. 

“Look here,” he said. “I’m a decent fellow. I 
live decent whether I’m in the South Seas or in 
Nantucket. That’s more than you can say of some 
of your own!”’ 

But was this youth “‘convinced” or was he 

64 


THE PERPETUAL FRONTIER 65 


merely in Jove? That was a fine question to bother 
the old gray heads. Tom had to bring the most 
delicate motions of his spirit out to the light of 
day. 

“Tl be hanged if I know which I loved first, God 
or Lydia,” said Tom despairingly. “They’re both 
mixed up together.” 

This answer almost cost him his membership. 
However they accepted him and passed their ac- 
ceptances on to the Monthly Meeting where again 
it was duly deliberated. Then came the request for 
the marriage. More committees, more questions— 
the women waiting upon Lydia, the men upon 
Tom. Tom actually trembled lest some objection 
might even yet bar the way. 

“But you'll marry me anyway, Lydia—won’t 
you?” he assured himself. 

“Yes, but thee must say ‘thee’—not ‘you,’” 
she warned him. 

At last the great moment. Tom and Lydia, so 
freshly young—so conspicuously young—sat among 
the old dignitaries on the high seat facing the 
meeting. 

First came the long silence. Then Tom, at his 
own discretion, rose, took Lydia’s hand, and said 
the solemn words: 

“JT, Thomas, take thee, Lydia,” and Lydia’s clear 
voice answered the same words. There was no priest 
Ur minister. 


66 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“They must stand up bravely and marry them, 
selves ’’—such was the sturdy Quaker saying. “It 
is a matter which does not concern an intermedi- 
ate person but rests between the young folk and 
God.” 

Their certificate was signed by all the hundred 
and fifty guests. 

(After all, was it so unwise, this solemn caring for 
the marriage of their young?) 

Then, only a week later, Tom shipped in the new 
brig, Touch-Me-Not. He was twenty-two and cap- 
tain. But youths were forward in those days. 

Lydia, standing alone on the housetop within the 
white-fenced Walk, wondered how Martha White 
had “stood it” when her man went away to sea. 
The sails of the Touch-Me-Not lessened and grew 
less, fluttered to mere threads as the ship changed 
her course off Great Point—so defenseless a speck 
in the gray expanse—so infinitely precious—her 
dear one held within that tiny thing. 

Suddenly Lydia turned with bowed head and dis- 
appeared down the dark hatch. 

“Ain’t she cold-hearted, though,” quoth Liza 
Anne Renuff, who, from her housetop, was watch- 
ing too. ‘Goin’ downstairs when her husband’s 
ship’s still in plain sight.” 

Liza Anne could not see the young wife locked in 
her lonely bedroom, nor the agony of stifled sobs 
which swept her there. Lydia stayed locked in her 


THE PERPETUAL FRONTIER 67 


bedroom for three hours. After which time she came 
out to her spinning wheel and spun steadily all day 
without stopping for meals. 

This day began for Lydia that habit of solitary 
prayer which grew upon her as the years went by— 
hours alone locked in her room. 

“Lydia Coffyn’s not resigned to her husband’s 
going away like most women,” said a sharp- 
sighted member of her meeting. “She pretends to 
be, but she isn’t. There’s a look to her. I know. If 
she had a shop now in Petticoat Lane to keep her 
busy, it would be better for her.” 

Dionis was born. But even the coming of so gay 
a little maiden—“the image of her father” —did 
not cure Lydia. For she was walled about with an 
implacable reserve. Tom Coffyn, and he only, had 
_ broken down that wall and brought to her the light 
and life which so amazed her. Now he was gone, 
and with his going went the light. She could only 
wait like one in prison for his return. This lone- 
liness bred in Lydia a severity. 

“Dionis, wipe thy feet at the door. I have just 
swept the room.” This was the welcome for Dencey 
when she returned from school. 

“Mother, I saw the cunningest little bird on the 
shore. He ran right in the big, big combers and 
wasn’t afraid.” 

“What was thee doing on the shore, Dionic” 
Thee should come straight home.” 


68 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


So the wall was built between Lydia and her little 
girl. 


All Dencey’s childhood was chaptered and di- 
visioned by her father’s returns—those glorious re- 
turns so longed for in the household, prayed for 
every morning in family prayer. 

The first of these she did not really remember, 
standing, a round-eyed child of three, in the door- 
way behind her mother. But all Nantucket re- 
membered it, so it was just as if she did. Tom 
dashed up the pretty, decorous steps and threw 
both arms about his Quaker wife standing at the 
top, kissing her rapturously three times. All the 
street saw him, but Liza Anne Renuff saw him 
best, for she had a side window for “seeing the 
pass.” 

“Lyddy was like to die,” declared Liza Anne. 
“And I should think she would, him kissin’ her be- 
fore the whole of Fair Street. “Come into the house, 
Thomas,’ she says. ‘And that I will,’ he answers, 
and she fair pulls him in an’ shuts the door. Then 
he says an 

“How does thee know what he said with the door 
shut, Liza Anne?” asked her listener. 

“Oh, that Peggy from Tom Never’s Head that 
Lyddy adopted—she was on the stairs. She told 
me the hull of it and a4 

Liza Anne always took breath in the middle of 


THE PERPETUAL FRONTIER 69 


a sentence, so it was a fine art to interrupt her. 

“And he says, just as if they weren’t married, 
“My love, my love, I’ve longed so to see thee. Just 
thee—no one else’; and she stops him—‘Thomas, 
thee forgets the child.’ With that, he turned around 
and saw Dencey lookin’ up with those round eyes 
of hers. 

“Lydia, not our baby, this great girl!’ he cries 
out. Why is it the men folks is so astonished that 
childer grow up while they’re gone? But then, o’ 
course, he’d never clapped eyes on Dencey before, 
that’s some excuse. Anyway, Peg says all his wild 
ways stopped to once, an’ he picked up Dencey in 
his arms, an’ looked at her face as if she’d been a 
ghost or somethin’—and then, what does thee think 
he said ?— 

“Thou dear little Impossible!’ 

“Now, what kind o’ a name was that to call his 
own Christian child? Well, anyways, Dencey 
seemed to like it. She just cuddled down against 
his neck quick. 

“Thomas, she knows thee for her father!’ says 
Lyddy. 

“With that, Dencey laughed the cutest little 
laugh, all half smothered against her father’s coat. 
‘Why, she never laughed like that before,’ says 
Lyddy. . 

“Well, I could ’a’ told her why—Lyddy never 
petted the child that way. Not she.” 


70 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


After this began a happy time for the little girl— 
a time not defined in her memory, but which 
entered into the texture of her days. There were 
long walks in the sunshine holding Father’s hand. 
They were standing on the shore, and the tiny 
teetersnipes with their legs like flower-stems were 
running on the sand in the white thin carpet of 
foam. Such funny, smart little birds. And the great 
breakers roared and smashed down, but never 
touched them. And Father said, “Dionis, I hope 
someday thee’ll have faith like those little birds.” 

And Dencey wondered what he meant. 

Then it was winter. Father coming into the house 
shaking off the snow like a great bear and laughing, 
laughing. And Mother ran to him—as if she had 
been frightened—and threw both arms about him 
and said, “Thank God,” twice. Then there was a 
day when Hopestill came and Dencey had a party 
for her doll with codfish vertebre for cups and 
scallop shells for plates. 

Oh, a happy magic time! 

And, meanwhile, the grown-ups were in a bitter- 
ness which they knew not how to bear. The War of 
1812 was a calamity which might well make them 
quail. For Nantucket was and is a perpetual fron- 
tier. No government can afford protéction to this 
outpost of the sea, and no government did so. The 
Revolutionary sufferings were not yet forgotten by 
Nantucketers, and now, in 1812, the people left 


THE PERPETUAL FRONTIER 71 


the Island by families and clans. Sixty houses were 
left vacant in the little town. Those who stuck to 
their Island knew not what each day would bring 
forth. The waters about them were full of the 
enemy’s ships. Their whaling fleet, one hundred 
and fifty strong, dwindled to nothing—the ships 
huddling into Nantucket Harbor for protection. 

Lydia thanked God every night in special prayer 

that her man was not on the high seas to be cap- 
tured by the British and left to rot in the hold of a 
prison ship—that most dreaded of all. 
_ But, spite of being at home, Tom was in constant 
danger. He took charge of a packet which ran the 
blockade to New York to get wood and flour for 
the Nantucketers. Fuel there was none, and the 
winter the coldest ever known. Foodstuffs grew 
scarce. Hungry people begged in the streets, an 
unchancy sight for a self-respecting New England 
town. 

Time and again, Tom Coffyn’s packet was chased 
by the enemy, fired upon, and got away only by his 
superior seamanship. 

By the fireside in the evening, Dencey would 
hear him telling stories. They always seemed to 
end, “And by and by the Britisher was hull-under 
and this morning not a stick of her to be seen.” 
Father could tell stories as no one else could tell 
them. 

But Dencey’s clearest recollection was of the day 


ihe DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


when Peace was declared. How the bells rang! 
How even Mother ran down town to make sure the ~ 
news was true, and how Dencey clung to her hand 
and wondered at the people running hither and 
thither in State Street and some really grown-up 
people crying aloud. 

She saw old Captain Parker on a little sled, a 
child’s sled but hitched to a horse. American flags 
were flying from both horse and sled. Frost sparkled 
on his bushy eyebrows and on his muffler where his 
breath touched. He was starting out to the Com- 
mons, and everybody cheered. 

“T’m goin’ to get to Polpis and Quidnet, if I 
can,” he said. 

“Oh, Mother, I wish I could go on the cunning 
little sleigh,’ said Dencey. “It'll be such a nice 
ride.” 

“Indeed it will not, child, Captain Parker will 
be fortunate if he doesn’t get stalled in the snow.” 

“Then, why does he go?” 

“To carry the news. So the people on the lonely 
farms can stop their fear. Oh, how wonderful that 
we need not be listening now every night for 
pirates and invaders.” 


CHAPTER X 


THE FAMILY ON FAIR STREET 


UT now, with the coming of Peace, Father, 
of course, went to sea again. 

This came out of the blue, as all calamity 
does in childhood. There had been Father with 
them—established—one of the unalterables of life. 
Then, suddenly, Dionis was crouching by the 
newel post in the front hall. She sat grasping the 
spindles of the stair rail in voiceless fear, hid under 
Father’s great sea cloak, which he had thrown over 
the post. 

Father and Mother were in the parlor, beyond 
the shut door, saying good-bye. But they didn’t 
say it! Dionis listened miserably to the death-like 
silence. At last came Father’s voice, like a deep viol 
—just a sentence—and Mother’s low answer—a 
single word. Then the terrible tragic silence again. 

All of a sudden, after an eternity, the parlor door 

73 


74 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


flung open. They came out, and Father, in a great 
hurry, snatched up his cloak. 

“Why, Dionis Coffyn!” exclaimed Lydia. “Go 
back to the kitchen at once.” Her voice had a sharp 
edge from the stress within. 

But Dencey sprang up to her father. 

“Father! Don’t go!”’ She wailed. 

Father held her close and tried to quiet her sob- 
bing. She felt his cheek wet against her own. But 
Mother was not crying. “Mother,” she decided, 
“did not care.” It was one of those swift child- 
judgments from which there is no appeal, and of 
which the grown-up is so unconscious. 

Then there was Father running fast down the 
doorsteps, struggling into his coat as he went—the 
awful finality of his back and bowed head. 

Dionis ran out to the kitchen and climbed sob- 
bing into Peggy’s lap. 

“Oh, Peggy,” she said. “The ocean goes so far— 
right into the sky.” 

Peggy patted her shoulder. 

“There, there!” she crooned. “Cryin’ when 
thee’s so fortunate. Two years thy father’s been 
home. Thee’ll be lucky if he stays two months next 
time. Some of ’em is off again in a fortnit.” 

During the following months and years, Dionis 
was conscious of a suspense that hung about the 
house and all its doings. The suspense was in 
Lydia’s mind really, but Dencey caught it somehow 


THE FAMILY ON FAIR STREET 75 


—reflecting like a small mirror. Perhaps the daily 
mention of that far sea-journeying, perhaps those 
instinctive haltings of Lydia in front of Tom 
Coffyn’s portrait—the sigh as she turned to work. 
However the suspense came, it was as if all things 
in the household waited an event. All things were 
held back for Tom Coffyn’s return. 

Of course, there were home happenings. Lydia’s 
brother Stephen’s wife died while Stephen was at 
sea. The wife died giving birth to her twelfth child. 
Nine children were living, and all these, including 
the hour-old baby, Lydia took into her household. 
Thus Dionis acquired overnight a great flock of 
brothers and sisters. There was Jane the oldest, 
such a help to Mother, Steve, Bob, Jared, and 
Elkanah the four boys, who teased Dionis with 
terrific but wholesome discipline. There was Rosie 
the cripple, Dencey’s age. Then the little boys 
Homer and Barna, and lastly the tiny baby Han- 
nah. 

Lydia did not hesitate one single hour in assum- 
ing this burden. There was always a downrightness 
about Lydia’s good deeds. 

“Just think,” she said, “when Steve comes back, 
he’ll feel he still has a home and the children all to- 
gether.” 

Of course, Peggy Runnel was always there in the 
house. Another of Lydia’s pensioners. 

Peggy’s father and mother lived in a cottage far 


76 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


out on the Commons near Tom Never’s Head. 
It was one of those tiny gray cots that can be 
glimpsed beyond the fluid rolling of the moors like 
loneliness made visible. One night, during the War 
of 1812, they heard footsteps around that desert 
place and pistol shots. Then the door burst open 
and Britishers from an invading vessel were all 
over the house. They took the hams from the 
chimney, the bread from the oven, all their little 
store of flour and cornmeal. It was in vain that 
Mrs. Runnel told them her children would starve. 
“There’s no more food on the Island and no way 
to get any,” she told them. But spite of this, they 
took all, and carried Mr. Runnel away as prisoner. 

Kind folk in Nantucket town gave of their 
scanty stores to help the stricken ones, and Lydia 
took Peggy—just ten years old—promising to keep 
her till the father returned. But Peggy always cried 
so bitterly at the mention of going back home that 
finally the matter was abandoned and Peggy 
became one of the family. 

Wonderful times were those in the great base- 
ment kitchen of the Fair Street house, wonderful 
for a little girl to experience, and, in remembrance, 
a fragrance for the whole of her life. Big as a town 
hall, that kitchen was, with a broad fireplace to 
match. Always crowded, full of the vivid life that 
youngsters bring, as one brings into the warmth the 
invigorating air of a winter night. 


THE FAMILY ON FAIR STREET 77 


Grandmother sat in her corner knitting, Lydia in 
the firelight whirled her spinning wheel, Jane 
carded wool or helped Dionis to sew her sampler. 
The older boys hulled walnuts sitting on the floor 
on an old spread-out sail. The walnuts came from 
the Cape, for there was only one walnut tree on the 
Island. Steve had traded them off a ship. 

“Come on, Dence, help hull ’em. They won’t 
make thy hands any browner than what they are.” 
So Steve taunted her. 

Dionis ran to her mother, holding out both little 
fists. “Are they brown, Mother?” she demanded. 
“Are they darker than Steve’s?”’ 

And Lydia, looking, said softly: 

“Child, they are the image of thy father’s 
hands.” 

Sometimes Lydia read from Fox’s Journal and 
Dionis would doze off over her sampler. Again 
Lydia would put aside the book and tell the ad- 
ventures of the saints of Quakerdom, saying: 

“T read this to-day, in Besse’s Sufferings.”’ 

Then Dionis would lean forward, elbows on 
knees, and eyes wide and eager. For Besse’s Suffer- 
ings was a book of life and adventures that know no 
fear. 

And, oh, the “company” they had! Young men, 
cousins all, just landed from the sea. Jane was 
pretty, and they came to chat with her. They were 
hardly older than Steve, but they had had their 


78 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


four years on the other side of the world. They told 
of forbidden coasts—a country called Japan where 
no man might land. It had a pure white cone-shaped 
mountain that seemed to hover in the sky, not 
touching earth at all. 

They told of desolate islands where there were 
no women—none whatever. 

“Gracious,” one would say with a glance at Jane, 
“T’m glad I don’t live there.”” And the apprecia- 
tive titter went round. 

They told of trees that vore bread, of savage 
men who would eat Nantucketers, of flowers that 
poured out such pollen as to streak the hands with 
honey, of auroras in the Antarctic, of sandalwood 
isles whose perfume wafted leagues over the sea. 

And they told of whales. 

Gideon Whippy—a big, black-haired lad—was a 
harpooner. He it was who must stand at the prow 
of the little whale boat holding ready his spear-like 
harpoon until they were in veritable touching dis- 
tance of the vast whale’s side. 

“Yes,” he said, nodding his young head proudly, 
“I gave her her medicine, for sure. I stabbed the 
critter right back of her fin—to the vitals, first 
lick. My, but she spouted blood high as the mast- 
head, an’ she beat her fins so it sounded like 
cannon shots. Then she swum off. We just coasted 
after her, an’ the line ran out so fast that the gun- 
wale smoked fire. Then she sounded. Jiminy, but; 


THE FAMILY ON FAIR STREET 79 


we had to act quick or we would ’a’ been with 
Davy Jones’s locker.” 

Great boasting this, but nobody blamed him— 
least of all Jane. 

These young folk had no dancing, no music, nor 
cards to play. They took their pleasure in talk, and 
they were famous talkers. And Lydia always 
brought out puddings and pound-rounds for such 
young cousins just off the sea. They’d had hard- 
tack so long. 

To the Coffyn fireside came also the long suc- 
cession of Quaker preachers “under concern” to 
visit Nantucket—remarkable men and women 
from New England, Philadelphia, North Carolina, 
Old England, and France. Some of them were 
solemn and forbidding to the little girl. But to 
most of them religion meant adventure. They had 
pushed into the heart of the American wilderness 
in their ardor for Christ. 

William Williams came from the Whitewater 
Meeting in Indiana. He was a notable preacher. 
But people might come fifty miles to hear him and 
sit in silence through the whole meeting. He spoke 
only if the Spirit moved him. “Does thee sup- 
pose,” he said to one who complained of this, “that 
i would journey so far, leaving my dear wife and 
the comforts of home, on a message of my own?” 

At the South Meeting House in Nantucket he 
preached three hours, “yet at the end the people 


80 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


did not rise to go, their minds being under a cover- 
ing so solemn.” This was for the grown-ups. Dencey 
remembered only how tender and merry was his 
glance, resting upon her, and how she sat all eve- 
ning, her little hand in his, while he talked to the 
others by the keeping-room fire. 

But, best of all, to Dencey’s mind was the coming 
of old Selah Wetherstone. Selah sat by the kitchen 
hearth, brown and wrinkle-faced, with eyebrows 
bushy and so long that Barna pulled them once 
with his fingers. 

Selah had been with Father through the whole 
Touch-Me-Not voyage. But homeward bound he had 
fallen from the masthead and broken both his legs. 

“That thar put me in dry-dock,” Selah would 
say ruefully. “Don’t spose I’ll ever git off the ways 
agin. I seem to be mended, but I don’t answer the 
wheel.” 

Selah could make ships: Oh, such little, little 
ships! He would whittle them with his knife and fit 
on tiny silken sails and impossibly small rails and 
anchors. The masts, sails, and all would lie flat on 
the deck. At last would come the great moment. 
Selah would put the ship into a bottle and quickly 
jerk a string, when, presto, all the masts and sails 
would fly upright. 

“Now,” he’d assert triumphantly. ‘‘Won’t the 
fandlubber be a-sayin’, ‘How’d ye ever git that 
thar ship int’ the bottle!” 


THE FAMILY ON FAIR STREET 81 


Selah talked unendingly of his “vyges.” “Ben 
round the Horn three times. Nasty place with its 
fogs an’ high cliffs, an’ the winds pouncin’ off of ’em 
like cats. Glory, the porpoises we ketched thar! 
We had porpoise-liver patties fur two days. Better 
nor any calves’ liver ye ever tasted. Captain 
Coffyn he was allus fur givin’ his men good feedin’. 
Not like some that ’ud like it ef the men could live 
on corn husks the hull endurin’ vyge. Onct we went 
into Callao, and Cap’n Coffyn, he got a lot of green 
vegetables an’ these here mangoes an’ melons an’ 
fresh meat. An’ he give ’em to us same as the 
cabin. But the men they don’t much like sich 
eatin’. *[wa’n’t three days afore they was com- 
plainin’ and growlin’, callin’ for their salt horse. 
Salt horse’s best fur vyges, anyways. Give me 
salt horse every time, what ye kin eat before goin’ 
to bed an’ feel it all night long a-lyin’ on yer stum- 
mick and a-nourishin’ of ye.” 

It might be observed that, whenever Selah came 
in, Lydia put aside her buzzing wheel and took 
some voiceless task, or sometimes even sat in the 
corner with her hands in her lap—unheard-of idle- 
ness. For sooner or later Selah always came ’round 
to his Cap’n Coffyn. 

“Sailed with many a cap’n in my life, but never 
a better nor Tom Coffyn—but never a queerer too— 
I’ll say that. Never a queerer! Why, looky hyar, 
when we struck that school 0’ whales off the Fijis 


82 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


an’ killed an’ cut in as fast as we could pound, 
Cap’n Coffyn he just goes ’round the deck as if it 
was pilot bread fur breakfast. But when we dis- 
kivered a island, why he was excited as a grass- 
hopper. He takes latitude an’ longitude, he axes 
every man jack has he ever known of a island in 
this here location. Then nothin’ would do but 
we must make a landin’. Though, crickit! we was 
glad enough after rollin’ around in that tub out 
o’ sight o’ land fur three months. Well, we goes 
int’ the lagoon—a pretty little place—with beaches 
an’ palm trees. An’ the fust thing Cap’n Coffyn 
jumps out on the sand he says, ‘I name this here 
island Lydia Island.’ Then he goes up int’ the 
woods. Dangerous, that is. Ye can’t tell what kind 
o’ pizen ye’ll run acrost—flower or critter or man. 
But it’s flowers the Cap’n is after. Much more 
pleased with them than whales. He’s like a boy in 
an apple orchard. He’s got a log book an’ writes an’ 
writes. I see it afterward in the cabin when I was 
swabbin’ up the floor—picturs of every one 0’ them 
flowers and long heathen names to ’um. An’ ‘expla- 
nations,’ he calls ’°em, but when ye gits through 
readin’ of ’em, ye don’t know near’s much about 
that thar flower as ye did afore. Hit was more like 
talkin’ about firearms—all pistils an’ stamins an’ 
sich.” 

“Well, Mis’ Coffyn,” said Selah suddenly. “Not 
long afore yer good man gits home, eh?” 


THE FAMILY ON FAIR STREET _ 83 


Lydia started as if from a dream. “Yes,” she 
answered. “ Almost four years. I do expect him now 
almost any day.” 

How astonished was Dencey. 

A lifetime had passed since Father had gone 
away. Then she was a tiny child in a shadowy 
world—now a big girl who could go to school and 
know with clear consciousness what went on about 
her. 

“Oh, Mother, will he truly truly come?”’ she 
cried, jumping up and clapping her hands. 

Then Selah went home, but not until Lydia had 
filled his pocket with thick ginger cookies. It oc- 
curred to Dionis that Mother liked Selah to come. 
This was very strange, for even Dionis could see 
that he was not a gentleman. He smelt so fishy— 
just like the docks—and Peggy said he only took 
a bath on Independence Day. 

“Yes,” said Mother softly, as she opened the 
door. ‘ Next time thee comes, Selah, maybe Cap- 
tain Coffyn will be here to greet thee.” 


CHAPTER XI 


A WONDERFUL NIGHT 


T WAS only a week later that Lydia received 
| a letter from her husband brought by the hand 
of Captain Joy home from his voyage. The 
letter was four months old, but that was not bad 
for South Pacific mail. 


My AMIABLE WIFE [it ran]: 

We have just fallen in with the ship Five Brothers and had a 
gam this morning. They are homeward bound, so I have the 
prized opportunity of communicating with my beloved wife. 

I am sorry to say this voyage has been far less successful 
than my former ones as captain. These whaling grounds where 
we now are (Lat. 15 south, Long. 110 west) seem about killed 
out, and spite of our best efforts, the ship’s hold is only half 
filled. Captain Joy advises our seeking the newly discovered 
grounds in the Japan Sea, and after much deliberation I have 
determined to go there. I cannot tell thee, my beloved Lydia, 
the pain this decision has cost me. I had hoped within a few 
months to be with thee and my darling daughter. Now that 
joy will be deferred another year. It is very difficult for me to 
bow to this ruling of Providence. My only comfort is that, 


84 


A WONDERFUL NIGHT 8s 


with thy greater faith and flowering of the Seed, thee will be 
able to accept it with resignation and serenity. 

There is no news here. Last month we landed upon an 
island where I discovered a species of lily which I believe 
has never been classified or described. If such proves to be 
the case, I shall name it Lilium Lydiense. May I say that in 
its fresh beauty upon its stalk it reminded me of thee. 

Thy ever loving husband, 
Tuomas CoFFyn. 


Lydia read the letter in her locked bedroom. 
Then called Dionis and told her its contents. 
Dionis did not cry. Father’s coming had grown to 
be a mythical thing, anyway. But it gave her a 
feeling of desolation that was the worse because so 
strange to her. Perhaps this too was reflected from 
Lydia’s white face. 

“Will he ever come?” Dionis asked. 

“Yes,” Lydia answered. “I know that he will.” 


If, within the next few weeks, anyone had noticed 
Lydia (which nobody did), he might have seen an 
added severity with the children, sharp judgments 
of her neighbors, even a frequent burning of her 
fingers at the cooking. After that came a tran- 
quillity of face and gesture; and Lydia, who spoke 
seldom, spoke still less. The Divine Seed had 
flowered into Resignation. 

So two months passed. 

One night Dionis, who was sleeping with her 
mother in the front room upstairs, was wakened 


86 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


by a sound at the window. It came again, just as if 
someone had thrown a pebble. 

“Why, they'll break the pane,” thought Dionis. 
Her mother slept on. Baby Hannah had been ill and 
Lydia had lost much sleep. 

“Mother,” cried Dencey. “Somebody’s throwin’ 
pebbles on the window.” 

Lydia roused slowly. “Oh, no, child, thee’s been 
dreaming. Go to sleep i 

“Crack” went the sound again. And Lydia 
sprang from the bed and opened the window. 

It was moonlight, but the intruder was in 
shadow. 

“Who wants me?” inquired Lydia. “Is anybody 
sick?” 

“TY want thee!”’ came up the answer. “And I am 
abundantly well.” 

The joyous voice brought a rush of memory. 

“Mother, it’s Father!’ squeaked Dencey, in 
amaze. 

But Lydia was already throwing her big shawl 
about her. She sped down the stairway like a 
swallow—fumbled at the lock, flung open the front 
door. Father caught her in his arms. 

“Lydia, my darling!”’ 

Then Dencey too was enveloped:in the woolly 
fresh-aired embrace. He dragged her to the moonlit 
door. 

“T must see thy face. Oh, such a big grown-up 


A WONDERFUL NIGHT 87 


daughter. Just thyself. Not like anybody at all.” 

“T didn’t expect thee,” Mother was saying, “thy 
letter % 

“Yes—yes, and right after it came a school of 
whales. We couldn’t kill and cut in fast enough. 
Oh, Lydia, God is good. I am home—home!” 

They crowded with nervous laughter through 
the hallway to the keeping room. Here Mother 
started to rake open the fire. But Father brushed 
her aside. 

“What has thee a big husband for if he can’t 
mend fire for thee?” he said. And he raked the red 
embers clear, piled on thin kindling and wood in 
quantities never allowed in the house. In an instant 
the room blossomed into rosy light. 

Then he hugged Mother over again. 

“T must go upstairs and get dressed,”’ she said. 

“No, no, thee looks so pretty wrapped like an 
Indian. And how long thy hair is, Lydia. Let’s 
stay here a moment. Just us three. Here, Dencey 
daughter, thee’ll take cold.” 

And he snatched off his greatcoat and wrapped 
the nightgowned Dencey as if she had been a baby. 
Then set her up bundle-wise in a chair. 

“Look there,” he said, with a glance at the front 
window, “the Smiths all lighted up too. Joe came 
up home when I did.” 

Joe Smith was his second mate, and his home 
was across the street. 


88 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Now, with a clatter-bang, Steve and Bob and 
Elkanah came like an avalanche downstairs. 

“Uncle Tom’s home!”’ they shouted. 

And Father could not imagine where all the boys 
had come from until Mother hurriedly explained. 
She had written when she took Steve’s children 
in, but Father had not got the letter. 

Then Mother and Dionis went upstairs quickly 
and dressed and hurried down to get breakfast. 

What delightful strangeness to have breakfast 
in the middle of the night. For it was only four 
o’clock even yet. 

“Oh, to drink thy coffee again, Lydia,” cried 
Father, following her about and bothering every- 
thing in the kitchen. “Thy coffee and thy pop- 
overs.” 

“That’s a hint,” retorted Lydia, in a voice that 
seemed all pent-up laughter—not like Mother’s 
voice at all. 

After breakfast, the dawn came strange too, like 
rose-colored magic—then full day, and a cart 
clattered up to the house with Father’s sea chest. 


CHAPTER XII 


OUT OF THE ORIENT 


ATHER was like a boy opening the great sea 
HH ches: They all crowded around. First he took 

out a swift, pure white, of whale ivory—deli- 
cate spokes whereon she could wind her wool. 

“T made it for thee,” he said. “It whiled away 
many an hour waiting for whales.” 

Then came a whale-ivory button for the newel 
post in the front hall. Then the pink cameo shell 
which Dionis was to treasure so many years. 

“Tt was a real flower,” he explained. “I copied 
it carefully. The little dove in the center is far 
plainer than I could draw it.” 

He was on his favorite theme, and must needs 
tell the genus and species of the flower, its habit of 
growth, its scent. 

Until Bob ventured: 

“Say, Uncle Tom. There’s lots more in the 
chest.” 

89 


oe) DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Oh, you boys—I’d have had presents for every 
one of you if I’d known you were here. But [ll 
find something for you aboard the Touch-Me-Not, 
nevericar 

Then he dived again and brought forth a little 
box. 

“Hold thy apron, Dencey,” he said. 

Dionis held out her full skirt, and into it Father 
poured a rainbow tide of shimmering, slithering 
shells. 

“T gathered these for thee on little lonely islands 
where foot of man had never trod.” 

Dionis gasped. The color caught her with a 
sharp pleasure almost like pain. Without a word 
she gathered up her treasures, spread them upon a 
table and began busily sorting the colors. There 
were purple shells, shells of delicate lavender, 
shells like a tiny sunrise of rose, shells milk-white. 
She crooned to them as she touched them. 

“Dionis,” said Mother’s voice, “isn’t thee going 
to thank Father?”’ 

Dionis had been shy of the tall impulsive stranger 
with those smile lines about his mouth, etched by 
the winds of two hemispheres. But now she turned 
with outspread arms, ran to him, and hugged him 
close about the neck. 

Then she returned to her crooning task, she 
knew not how long. 

She was roused by a sweet unearthly scent— 


OUT OF THE ORIENT 91 


a scent full of the mystery of the Orient—that 
Orient of the old days which was all romance, with 
no menace. 

She looked up. The decorous familiar room 
was rollicking in beauteous confusion. A white- 
embroidered shawl hung with flexile drenched folds 
over the chest lid, Quaker gray silk, yards and yards 
of it, billowed over a chair—gray but shot through 
with lavender like a hidden melody. 

“T got these from China,” Father was explain- 
ing. 

But upon another chair was that which held 
Dencey’s attention. Two Chinese rose jars—one 
of intense azure—a color that seemed to think. 
Another of translucent white glaze with figures 
upon it, a woman and her children about her, 
all with pink, dreamy faces, living and real. A 
beauty seemed to bloom from the vases and per- 
vade the very air. They drew Dencey to them. 
She fell upon her knees in front of the chair, looking 
close, clasping her hands because she knew she 
must not touch them. 

Suddenly came Lydia’s voice. 

“Dionis Coffyn, whatever is thee doing, kneeling 
that way? Thee looks as if thee was praying to 
those heathen vases.” 

Dionis started, scrambled to her feet. A wave of 
tears swept her and she ran from the room. 

Up in the attic she crouched behind a little hair 


92 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


trunk sobbing. What was this misery like a bat’s 
wing that hurt her so abominably? She was bitterly 
ashamed that anyone should have seen her kneeling 
to the vases—terribly angry at Mother, who had 
made the others look at her. And she was afraid— 
she did not know of what. She sobbed a long while. 

Suddenly there was a leaping step upon the 
stairs, and Father’s voice calling: 

“Daughter, where is thee?”’ 

Dionis kept hidden, but Father found her and 
drew her out from behind the trunk. Oh, now, if 
he asked questions, she would be undone! 

“Did thee know,” he asked casually, “that thee 
left all thy pretty shells on the table? I gathered 
them into the box for thee. And here is the blue 
vase. I brought it for Mother. But she says thee 
can have it because she has the other one.” 

His arm was about her. Where was the strange 
trouble now? The bat’s wing of it had flown out 
of the window—and all the childish anger against 
Mother. : | 

“Father,” said Dionis busily, “I’m going to 
make flowers out of my shells. Jane makes ugly 
ones, but I’ll make pretty ones. Thee’ll see.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


FATHER AND DENCEY 


6 he time Father stayed at home only eight 


weeks. But these were long enough for the 

growth of a tree of life—the understanding 
between Dionis and her father. It sent roots deep 
into the heart of the little girl, and its foliage 
spread through all her growing thought. 

Father took her for long walks in the Commons. 

“Why, Tom,” Lydia said, “the berries aren’t 
ripe yet.” 

“Ts it sheep-shearin’ time?’ inquired little 
Barna. 

“No,” laughed Tom Coffyn. “I guess we’re 
going because the sky is there.”’ 

Father showed her the flowers, explained them 
as though she were grown up, and taught her the 
long Latin names. He even took her to one of the 
lonely beaches to swim—an unheard-of perform- 

93 


94 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


ance. Dionis romped like a boy in the tingling 
water. But as she wore a long calico dress and 
underclothes, and the dress was modestly weighted 
with shot, the swimming was not a success. 

An’ how should it be,” quoth Peggy when they 
came home. “Who ever heard of a girl swimmin’? 
I’d think thee’d be ashamed, Dencey Coffyn.” 

“JT didn’t have time to be ashamed,” laughed 
Dionis. “The ocean knocked me down quicker’n 
I could get up, and when I laughed, it knocked me 
down more. It was like a big funny person.” 


Then Father went away again and became part 
of the long ago. 

And then came the great change. 

Father might journey around the Horn, but the 
difference to him was not so great as was this change 
to the little girl—the removal from Fair to North 
Water Street—oh, another planet! Infancy was defi- 
nitely left behind in the old home. Girlhood began in 
the North Water Street house. It was Grandfather 
Coffyn’s house, and Mother had moved there to 
take care of Grandfather, who was suddenly dis- 
abled and could go to sea no more. Grandfather 
had the great front room to himself, the room where 
Great-grandmother’s picture hung and the flower 
piece of wax flowers under glass stood on the table. 
It was here that he called Dencey in, each First 
Day, and persistently taught her Congregational- 


FATHER AND DENCEY 95 


ist doctrine about hell and her soul. Mother said it 
was not true doctrine, but it haunted Dencey and 
made her afraid. 

Mother had her own room. And Dionis (oh, 
wonderful, this!) was given a room all to herself 
on the third floor at the back, whose windows be- 
held the sea. As for the others, Steve, Jane, and the 
rest, they spread hither and yon over the whole 
vast house. 

In Mother’s room was born the beloved new 
baby, not a cousin, but Mother’s own son and 
Dionis’s brother. They called him Ariel, for that 
was the name of a Coffyn grandfather ’way back 
in the sixteen hundreds. Dionis could not but love 
him more than Hannah and Barna and Kanah, for 
he was her very own. 

Hopestill, who lived next door now, became 
Dencey’s inseparable companion. Together they 
walked each morning to the Coffin School, a long 
walk clear across Nantucket town. 

So Dionis came to the time when she threw the 
fateful stone at Jetsam. And so had to teach him to 
read “to make up.” 


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BOOK THREE 


CHAPTER XIV 


MEETING JETSAM 


HY is it the children of the very poor al- 

\ \) ways wear garments four sizes too big for 

them? Sammie Jetsam’s pea-jacket would 
have fitted a grown sailorman, and hence it flopped 
dejectedly about his ankles. Perhaps this was just 
as well, for the rain fell in torrents. 

Sammie Jetsam trudged along in the open Com- 
mon where no path was. His little figure possessed 
the landscape solely. There was not even a house 
in sight, only the dreary Common, gray in the rain. 
Sammie walked slowly, swearing softly to himself. 
His thin little face under the great hat was as bleak 
as the weather. Sometimes, as solitary children do, 
he spoke aloud. 

“She wun’t come,” he emphasized with his heel. 
“Not her!” 

And a little later: . 

“Gals like her made o’ silk and sugar what melts 
in the rain. She wun’t come.” 

9 


100 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


But he trudged onward, nevertheless. 

Now, up over the misty horizon, loomed the 
stunted pine where Dencey Coffyn was to meet 
him. He didn’t even look at it. He was quite close 
when he saw something fluttering by the tree. 

“Whillikins!”’ he exclaimed. “Gee Whillikins!” 

He began to run. 

It was indeed Dencey Coffyn. 

She stood under the tree, grasping with all her 
strength a big convulsing umbrella that threatened 
every moment to lift her bodily from the earth. 
It was quite useless as an umbrella. The rain swept 
under it so that her dress was soaked and her face 
glistened with wet. She was so occupied in her con- 
test with the wind that she did not see Jetsam until 
he spoke to her. 

“Daggon’t, I didn’t think ye’d come.” 

Dencey’s eyes opened in amazement. 

“Didn’t I say I’d come?”’ she demanded. 

“Yes, ye did, but hit’s rainin’.” 

“Ts that the reason thee’s late? Thee mustn’t be 
late,” she added nervously. “I haven’t got time. 
And thee didn’t bring the book.” 

“Yes, I did, though,” and Jetsam drew from the 
folds of the pea-jacket the precious Pilgrim’s 
Progress. 

“Open it,” she commanded. 

Dencey began forthwith. 

“The first word there is now—WN, say it!” 


MEETING JETSAM IOI 


Jetsam sullenly complied. 

“‘O—does thee remember the o I told thee.” 

Jetsam nodded. 

(T4 W.” 

“Crimps, that’s a long name for sich a small 
letter,” he said. 

“W's a very proud letter,” commented the 
teacher. “And the next word’s Vanity.” 

Never was teaching under greater difficulty. The 
two shivery figures crouched close together, and the 
two red little noses sniffed in concert. Now the 
wind seized the page and beat a thrilling tattoo 
with the corner of it. 

“There’s no use to swear at the wind,” declared 
Dencey. “It won’t stop. Besides, swearing’s futile. 
Mother said so. Now put thy finger on V so as to 
keep the place.” 

The grubby finger touched the letter. Instantly 
the loosened page tore across in the wind. 

Jetsam stamped his foot. 

“T can’t do it nohow,” he stormed. “This hyar 
rain’ll spile the book. I’m goin’ home.” He banged 
the book to. 

Immediately an enormous relief came to Dencey. 
If Jetsam didn’t want to learn, she was free. She 
could go back home and tell Mother. Mother would 
forgive or punish her, it mattered little which, for 
Dencey would be home again, safe in the old ways 
she knew. She needn’t come out here ever again. 


102 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 

She watched Jetsam almost with a smile. He 
was opening the book again to find the torn place— 
oh, very carefully, lest the wind catch it. His hand 
trembled and his head bent lower—lower. 

Suddenly, the pathos of his unletteredness swept 
her all over again. It was there—the stern “1 
must” which had brought her out into wind and 
rain. She glared at him over her two grasping hands 
which held the umbrella. 

“No, thee won’t go home, Sam Jetsam,’ she 
rang out. “I had to run away to get here. And— 
and I told my mother a lie. And now thee’s just got 
to learn something to pay up.” 

His head was still down. 

“T won’t larn from no gal,” he said sullenly. 

“Then, why’d thee make me teach thee?” 

He stood still a puzzled moment. 

_ “We could go to Brown’s barn,” he conceded. 

“Tt don’t leak but a smidjin.” 

“Then we'll go there,” she answered in a fateful 
voice. 

Up the storm-blurred hillside toiled the two 
valiant little figures, Jetsam ahead, Indian fashion, 
and Dionis following with the careening umbrella. 
Surely Parnassus was never more steeply climbed. 

They were fairly swept into the. barn by the last 
obstreperous gust. Inside, the old building swayed 
and creaked. There were low roars, and high fine 
screechings of wind as if from witch instruments. 


MEETING JETSAM 103 


But it was haven. The damp hay had a wine-like 
smell. 

“The hay’s in the loft,” said Jetsam. “Let’s go 
up. An’ nobody’! see us thar, neither.” 

They climbed the ladder, found a soft nest, and 
once more opened the book. 

But here Jetsam faced his real problem. With all 
impediments removed, he was assailed by that 
strange inertia which stands at the beginning of all 
mental effort. His mind, never brought into sub- 
jection, baulked like a bad horse. He was shy, re- 
sentful, ashamed, and immeasurably stupid. He 
had no defense except the small boy’s—trying to 
be funny. 

“Pilgrim,” he announced smartly. “Did he sell 
pills, then? War he a doctor?” 

“Of course he wasn’t. Is thee going to begin, 
Sam Jetsam?” 

“Say, ye ought to see Jill when she’s drunk. She 
staggers around like this.” 

Dionis regarded him with infinite scorn. 

“Sam Jetsam,” she said. “Thee’s just mocking 
an’ hectoring. If thee doesn’t want to learn, I can 
go home this minute. And I'll not come again. 
I can tell thee that.” 

She jumped up from the hay, fluttered her skirts 
into order. He knew she meant what she said. He 
caught at her skirt with two frightened hands. 

“Set down,” he pleaded. “I’ll git it somehow.” 


104 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


And “git it” he did—one letter after another— 
whole words even. Difficult ones like Vanity Fair, 
which he recognized no matter in what corner of 
the page they hid. He bent over the book in a 
hungry eagerness. 

“Now I know seven whole words. Tell me 
another. What’s this hyar one with the long tow o’ 
letters trailin’ after ut? Now, see if I kin say them 
fust ones.” 

Dencey bent to her task, flushed and eager— 
meeting his questions. Time passed. She was all 
unaware. 

Suddenly she looked up. 

“Oh. It’s a long time. I must go. I'll be late to 
tea, and then—and Mother We 

“Will yer ma whup ye?” questioned Jetsam, 
following her hastening form down the ladder. 

“No, she doesn’t believe in it.” 

“Then what yer ’fraid of?” 
“Tm not afraid.” 

But she was. Jetsam could well see that this 
little aristocrat, so protected in a world he knew 
not, was bitterly afraid. It was his first sense of kin- 
ship with her. 

“Who will whup ye if yer ma won’t?”’ he asked. 
“Grandfather might. But I’m not afraid of 
that.” > 

No, it was not a corporeai fear. It was different, 
this. She was an outlander. She belonged to this 


MEETING JETSAM 105 


rainy windy world out on the Commons, exposed 
to dangers and knowledges which she could not 
guess. Home could not enfold her. Responsibility— 
the heavy pressing sense of it was upon Dencey— 
setting her the long, long task. It was bred into her 
by her pioneer ancestry, her Quaker ancestry. 
She could no more resist responsibility than she 
could the color of her eyes and hair. 

Now she was at the wide barn door. With many a 
struggle, she opened the umbrella. She stepped out. 

With one huge burst the wind turned her um- 
brella wrong-side out. Dencey burst into tears. 

“Tt’s ruined,” she exclaimed desperately. 
*Mother’s umbrella. She’ll ask me, an’ II—1’ll 
have to lie again.” 

Jetsam took it with almost a gentle gesture. 
It was one of those huge drab affairs well nigh as 
proper as the Meeting House itself. Slowly he bent 
it back, holding the ribs in place until the fluttering 
bony rag was its former useful self. 

“Thar,” he said proprietarily. “Don’t ye put it 
up agin. Ye’ve got to reef everything in this hyar 

alex: 
E She tucked it under her arm and hurried forward, 
bending her bonneted head in the rain. 

“Ye come back agin to-morrow,” he shouted 
after her. 

“No—Mother needs me. Next day I’ll come— 
after school.”’ 


106 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


He hurried after her. 

“T hain’t forgive ye yit,” he said. “ Recollect 
that. Ye’ve got to come.” 

Then he stood in the road and watched her go— 
the terrible wind ballooning her skirts as she 
struggled down the path. Even yet he did not trust 
that she would come again! 


CHAPTER XV 


BROWN’S BARN 


ENCEY’S next expedition to the Brown 

1) barn, so dreaded by her, proved to be as 

easy as the first had been difficult. Mother 

was away helping Martha White with her new 

store. So Dencey did not even have to make the 
excuse of going to Aunt Lovesta’s. 

It was real spring—the Commons a vivid green. 
Violets looked up at her from the path with friendly 
eyes. In the distances were purple carpets of them. 

Jetsam waited for her at the top of the hill. 
They climbed together into the fragrant hay. The 
hay-door was open, looking out over the field 
spaces to the stark surprise of azure sea. How 
differently this spoke to each of them! To the girl, 
Father’s ship sailing somewhere on the other side of 
the world; to the boy, a whaler outward bound and 
he, shipped as cabin boy. Of course, neither of them 

107 


108 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


spoke this. The sea was as common as the straight 
mantelshelf above the fireplace, or the grass by the 
cabin door. 

Dionis immediately took out of her school satchel 
a sheet of paper—two sheets torn from one of 
Grandfather’s old logs. 

“T made this for thee. It ll help,” she said. 

There stood the letters of the alphabet in 
straight columns like print and a picture to each 
letter. Jetsam gazed with bulging eyes. 

“Ye never,” he asserted. “ Ye couldn’t make that 
thar.” 

Jetsam never spoke a tentative statement. It was 
always flat, fight-provoking argument. 

“T did too,” said Dionis. 

“Why, look at this hyar bird flyin’ by the second 
letter. Hits like a book-pictur’.” 

“T made it,’ she asserted again. “I guess I 
wouldn’t say so if I didn’t. I don’t tell | 4 

She stopped as though a hand were laid upon her 
mouth. Could she, Dencey Coffyn, any longer say, 
“T don’t tell lies’? Why, when she was making 
these very letters, Mother had asked her “ What 
for,’ and she had replied, “For the children at 
school.’”’ Oh, a lie every day! And how could she 
ever stop it! : 

Jetsam was still commenting: 

“The dog hyar next to the D hain’t so good. 
Don’t look like a feisty bitin’ one. But this hyar 


BROWN’S BARN 109 


hat. Why hit’s the spittin’ image o’ Lazer Gardner’s 
hat. Seen it a hundred times.” 

Praise is sweet—all the sweeter for being re- 
luctant praise. Dencey began to brighten. 

““An’ the letters—all in a row. Why, it’s as good 
as a ship’s list. Ye kin tell the hull cargo.” 

But even without the ship’s list, Jetsam had done 
admirably. He remembered every word, seeing it on 
the page, and even spelled many from memory. 
Dionis, accustomed to the baby minds she taught 
at school, was delighted at this progress—a fleet 
chase with which she could hardly keep up. 

“An’ now I know all o’ them. Ef I could just 
write em.” How he grasped at the book with both 
hands as-if it might fly away from him. “ Would ye 
show me the writin’?” he asked wistfully. 

“But I didn’t promise to teach thee to write,” 
said Dionis the Just. 

“No,” he said. He paused, measuring her 
shrewdly. He was baffled. “Then I must just git it 
my own self.” 

The book, her precious Pilgrim’s Progress, had 
greatly degenerated. Greasy where his hands had 
gripped it, wrinkled and stained. 

“Why, Sam Jetsam!” spoke out Dencey. “I’d 
think thee’d be ashamed. Thee’s torn another 
page—no, two more.” 

“T didn’t do that.” His face went instantly 
white and hard. Dencey had a flashing remem- 


IIO DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


brance of the day she threw the stone. “Injun Jill 
done that.’”’ Here an angry oath. “I was studyin’ 
by the firelight, an’ she comes up an’ snatches afore 
I kin git hold. She run to the other side 0’ the room. 
Lordy, I thought hit was a goner. I never could git 
nothin’ back off her. But I got this book. I kicked 
her an’ bit her. She'll remember it, I reckon.” 

“What did she want?’ asked Dencey, puzzled. 
“Did she read it herself?” 

“Her! She can’t read no more’n a cat. An’ she 
says, if she can’t, I sha’n't. I sha’n’t be no better’n 
what she is.”’ 

“But thee is better, anyway.” 

Dionis had no idea beforehand of making such an 
assertion. It burst out along with her indignation 
and pity. 

As for Jetsam, he gave two assenting grunts, 
Indian fashion. Then he sat still, staring into space. 

“Well, go on,’”’ said Dencey, who was always 
steering back to the main course. “‘ Then Christian 
fell down’ If thee learns three more words 
it'll be a sentence.” 

Somehow, Jetsam was very hoarse on those 
three words. 


So the lessons multiplied in the old Brown barn. 
Soon Jetsam could read whole sentences, haltingly 
and with abominable inflections. Yet he read them. 
Then, suddenly, he acquired a marvelous swiftness, 


BROWN’S BARN III 


and Dencey discovered he was saying it by heart. 
With scathing reprimand, she skipped him over to 
the end of the book. The thing was to be done 
right! 

And there were lessons other than the reading, 
lessons of which both children were quite unaware. 
Jetsam lost his temper at every mistake and then 
swore oaths, various and picturesque—the glean- 
ings from the docks and shipyards. 

“T don’t think,” remarked Dencey, “that thee 
should speak of Jesus that way.” 

“Why not?” he demanded, his finger still on the 
sentence which had tripped him up. 

“T think it might hurt His feelings.”’ 

“His feelin’s! What ye mean? Jesus—hit’s jist 
a word ye say.” 

““A word!” Nothing could exceed the scorn and 
horror. ‘‘Thee knows better than that, Sam Jet- 
sam. Thee isn’t a Fiji or a Chinaman.” 

Jetsam squirmed. 

“Well, sayin’ ‘Jesus’, hit’s jist like sayin’ ‘God.’ 
I reckon He don’t hyar it.” 

“He hears everything, Jesus does,” declared the 
Quaker Dencey. “Why, He hears thy thoughts. 
And—and He talks too. He talks to Mother when 
she stays alone in her room. He doesn’t talk to 
Grandfather, ’cause he’s a Congregationalist. But 
Aunt Lovesta, why He tells her to go places, an’ 
she goes. She saw Him once, Aunt Lovesta did.” 


112 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Jetsam was thoroughly scared. 

“He hain’t on Nantucket, is He?” he inquired. 

“Of course He’s on Nantucket. Why, Aunt 
Lovesta says He even goes to the Fijis’ land, only 
they don’t know it. He wouldn’t leave out Nan- 
tucket! Well, I guess not!” 

The next time Jetsam took the name of his Lord 
in vain, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE BELOVED AUNT LOVESTA 


(): COURSE, Dionis could not have accom- 
plished all these visits and absences had it 
not been for Aunt Lovesta Coffyn. 

Aunt Lovesta lived on Mill Street, and Dencey’s 
custom had been to go to see her almost every 
day. Thus, between the two places, Dencey’s 
flittings were not noticed. 

Lovesta Coffyn was as different from Lydia as 
day from night. Yet she also was Quakeress to the 
core. Perhaps even more typical Quakeress than 
Lydia, though people of Lovesta’s power are not 
common in any sect or city. 

When the little girl entered the room, Aunt 
Lovesta would greet her with a warmth that was 
like a kiss. Of course, she did not kiss her, for that 
was not Quaker custom. 

“And how is thee to-day?” would say her deep 

413 


114 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


large voice. “I know thee got that sum. Ciphering 
couldn't get ahead of thee. Now, could it?” 

“No, I got it right—as good as Hopestill. And 
this morning I spelled down everybody, even Caleb 
Folger. And he can spell representation and 1n- 
describable and never gets mixed in the endings. 
That isn’t worldly boastings, is it, Aunt Lovesta? 
Cause it’s true.” 

Here would follow some long meaningless tale 
that children love to narrate, and Aunt Lovesta 
would listen to the very end, In the brightness of 
this shining, Dencey would unfold and expand— 
laugh softly as she chattered. Never did Lydia know 
the inadvertent confessions, the childish puzzle- 
ments and terrors which all came to Aunt Lovesta. 

Did Lydia suspect this? She seldom refused that 
oft-repeated request, ‘Mother, may I go to Aunt 
Lovesta's!’? Yet, as she said, her-“SYes,;;;her lips 
pressed into a straight line which spoiled the 
beauty of her mouth. 

Aunt Lovesta was tall and full of health. Coming 
toward you (and she always did that) she moved 
serene and alive, like a full-sailed ship. Her gar- 
ments seemed always to sweep backward, though 
she did not walk fast. Benevolence beamed from 
her eyes, and from her face an enviable happiness. 
The Quaker gray of her dress, her kerchief white 
as mist, seemed only to throw into relief something 
colorful and flamboyant within her. 


THE BELOVED AUNT LOVESTA 11s 


Aunt Lovesta was a preacher and had her 
“minute” to go upon religious journeys to speak 
the word of life. She would suddenly be “under 
concern” to go to South Carolina, up the Hudson, 
or into Canada—wherever the Spirit led. Dionis 
would come to her home to find her shawled and 
bonneted, her carpet bag in her hand, starting 
away to the “ packet.” 

“Oh, Aunt Lovesta, take me with thee on thy 
errand for God,” she would plead. 

“There are too many dangers for a little girl,” 
Aunt Lovesta would answer. “When thee grows 
up, perhaps the Lord will send thee on errands of 
thy own!” 

And Dionis, with a little bleakness and a little 
fear, would think how the Lord had never yet 
spoken to her. Perhaps He never would! 

Aunt Lovesta was the soul of trustfulness. Thus, 
when Dencey, flush-faced, would come in after 
school and at the end of a few moments would start 
up again, Aunt Lovesta was miles away from any 
suspicion. 

“What, going home so soon?”’ she would query. 
“T only get a glimpse of thee these days.” 

“Yes,” Dencey would reply, with eyes looking 
somewhere else. “I have to go.” 

“Here take a fresh doughnut, child. Does thee 
feel quite well?” 

“Yes, I’m well. Fare thee well, Aunt Lovesta.” 


116 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


And Dencey would speed away toward the 
Commons and Brown’s barn, wondering, ‘‘ Was it 
a lie? I didn’t say I was goin’ home. But I said 
“yes.” I guess “yes’ is a lie.” 

A lie to Aunt Lovesta. What would Aunt Lovesta 
think of Dencey if she knew? There was coid iso- 
lation as the curtain of her lie slid softly dawn 
between Dencey and those she loved. 


4 a 
yh 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 


ND besides the lies, there was stealing! Dionis 
A called it just that. Quakers are not apt to 
call things by covered-up names. It began 

with the stealing of Stephen’s coat. 

Dencey was sitting in the kitchen corner washing 
the crude salt when Stephen came flinging in. 

“T won’t wear this coat once more—not once. 
Look at the rags dangling.” 

He snatched the coat off and threw it on the 
floor. 

“Thee can’t waste a coat like that, Stephen 
Severance,” declared Peggy. “It does perfectly well 
for bringing in the wood.” 

“Tt doesn’t. Besides, I’ve got Uncle Tom’s old 
coat for that. There goes!” 

He gave the coat a kick. Of course, Lydia was not 
within hearing of such independence. 

117 


118 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Dencey, in her corner, was visited by an un- 
expected flash: Jf Jetsam had that coat ! 

It would cover up that space of dirty white skin 
she could always see on Jetsam’s chest. Yes, and the 
hole in the back showing some vertebre. Dencey 
didn’t like these glimpses. 

“Thee’s a fool, Stephen,’ Peggy was saying. 
“Throwin’ away a coat just cause Hannah Bourne 
seen thee in it, over the fence. Even if thee is soft 
on Hannah r 

“T’m not soft on Hannah,” retorted the crimson- 
faced Stephen. “But I won’t wear rags, Peg Run- 
nel.”’ 

(If Jetsam had that coat. If he only had it. Peggy 
was hanging it on a hook and laughing at Stephen. 
But, of course, Jetsam couldn’t have it. Dencey 
would never dare to ask Mother or even Stephen 
about it.) 

But all day the thought dragged at her like a 
child at her skirts. In school and on her way home. 

If Jetsam had that coat. He hasn’t got one at all. 
Only that pea-jacket for rain! And Jill wears that 
most rains. He just wears his shirt. The same shirt 
always, always. 

That night she was undressing alone by the 
embers of the kitchen fire. She wasn’t thinking 
about the coat at all. When, presto, there it was, 
where the devil himself had prepared it, stuffed 
behind the kitchen wood-box in a tight roll. 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 119 


With sudden impulse, Dencey snatched it and 
ran upstairs to her room. Of course, she wouldn’t 
give it to Jetsam. She knew she wouldn’t do that. 
But why did her heart pound so? 

Mother had once said, “‘Dencey, when thee has 
done wrong, Something always tells thee. God 
leaves no one without the Inner Guiding Light. 
Thee will know!” 

Yes, she knew. It was a damnable deed. She 
would not steal Stephen’s coat; she’d slip down- 
stairs, after a while, when everybody was asleep, 
and put it back where Stephen had hidden it. But 
between this action and the doing of it swam 
always the picture of Jetsam with the thin torn 
shirt—sometimes plastered flat to his body by the 
rain. Ugh! 

She did not go downstairs. She lay awake hour 
after hour. She was a thief. She would go to hell. 
Mother didn’t say so. But Grandfather did—and 
that it was burning forever. 

Still she could not take the coat downstairs to its 
place again. 

She sat up in bed, cold with perspiration on her 
forehead. There was the moon rising over the dim 
sea—the sea which moved in the darkness and 
whispered. Father was on that sea somewhere far 
and far. If he knew he had a thief for a daughter, 
what would he do? 

At the thought of Father, she began to cry softly. 


120 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Still she did not take the coat downstairs to its 
place. 


Difficulties next day, oh, many of them. The 
taking the coat to school in a bundle, the hiding it 
with her coat. Then taking it out to Brown’s barn, 
always, even yet, saying to herself that she would 
not give the coat to Jetsam. But the day was rainy 
—cold as, in Nantucket, a northeaster in June can 
be cold! Jetsam, as he settled himself beside her on 
the hay, was plainly shivering. 

Dencey suddenly thrust the bundle at him. 

“Here, Sam Jetsam,” she said roughly. “Thee 
take that. It’s aicoati” 

There were unexpected outcroppings of pride in 
Jetsam. 

“Tt hain’t my coat,” he said. “Why should I 
take it?” 

“Because thee’s cold. Put it on, I say.” 

“T hain’t cold. I’ve got enough on.” 

“Thee hasn’t, Sam Jetsam. I can see thy skin 
in three places. It isn’t right,’”’ she burst forth with 
sudden Quaker justice, “for one boy to have three 
coats and another not even one.” 

““Who’s got three coats?”’ 

“Why, Stephen. And he threw this one away.” 

Jetsam opened the bundle. Reluctantly he put 
his arms in both armholes at once, drew the coat 
on over his head, boy way, settled into it snugly. 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 121 


“H’m!” he grunted. “Steve hadn’t oughta 
throwd a coat like this away.” 

And Dencey, looking at him, felt strangely, sud- 
denly warm. As if she herself had put on the 
coat. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


MORE ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 


ENCEY stood one day in the corner of Aunt 
1) Lovesta’s keeping room. Stood and stood. 
“What does thee want, child?”’ asked 
her aunt. “Come here, let me feel thy cheek. Why 
is thee so hot?” 

Dencey came unwillingly. 

“Aunt Lovesta,” she asked, “does a thief always 
go to hell?” 

“Why, what put such a question in thy head, 
Dencey?” 

““J—] just want to know. Does he?” 

“No, child. If he is sorry, if he repents truly, 
he does not—even a thief.” 

“What is repenting truly?” 

Aunt Lovesta was pleased. Lydia had always 
called Dencey an unspiritual child, but what 
searching questions, these. 

“Repenting truly is feeling so sorry to the dear 

122 


MORE ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 123 


Lord that thee is sure thee will never do it again.” 

Dencey fetched a deep sigh. 

“But suppose the—the man is sure he will do it 
again.” 

“Then, dear child, he has not repented.” 

“And—and if he doesn’t repent he will go to 
hell.” Dencey’s eyes were wide and dark and a 
little wild. 

“Dear child, fix not thy thought on hell, but in 
the inward and spiritual light. That will guide thee 
and tell thee all. Does thee know somebody who 
has stolen something?” 

““No—oh, no,’ hastened the startled Dencey. 
“T was just thinking. Grandfather was—was telling 
me about the sin against the Holy Ghost.” 

Aunt Lovesta’s black eyes snapped with dis- 
pleasure. Lydia must somehow prevent the old 
man from teaching the child false doctrine. 

“Stealing is not the unforgivable sin. We have 
Scripture for that, Dencey. Does thee not remember 
what our Lord said to the thief on the cross— 
‘To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise’ ?” 

Aunt Lovesta’s face began to glow with her 
“preaching look.” 

“Had the thief on the cross repented?’ asked 
the persistent Dencey. 

“Yes, child.” 

“But how could He know he had? Why, he 
wouldn’t ever have a chance to steal again, Aunt 


124 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Lovesta. Maybe Christ was just sorry for him and 
forgave him anyways.” 

“No, no. Our Lord is not lax. The thief had re- 
pented. Make sure of that, Dencey.”’ 

Already Aunt Lovesta was unconsciously dream- 
ing of this for a next First Day talk. She was not as 
keen as she might have been to search to the bottom 
of Dencey’s fear. 

Dencey went off more miserable than ever. Could 
she stop stealing food for Jetsam? Would she take 
the warm coat from Jetsam and give it back to 
Stephen who had three? No, she had not repented, 
and without repentance there was no hope. 


But the matter of the coat was not to remain an 
inner conflict in the bosom of Dencey Coffyn. 

The loss of a coat with four good buttons and 
half a yard of unbroken cloth could hardly go un- 
noted in a Quaker household. Dencey, coming into 
the kitchen, found her mother and Peggy in serious 
conversation. 

“T hung it on a peg near the hearth,” said Peggy 
with a hurt sniff. “And that’s the plum last I seen 
Onyits’ 

“Now, Peggy, I don’t suspect thee, so there’s 
no use sniffing,’ said Lydia, her hands pushing 
strongly at the bread dough. “Stephen must have 
made away with it as he said he would. There was 
plenty stuff to make over for Barna’s trousers. 


MORE ADVENTURE OF THE COAT 125 


Agatha Mitchell wove it, and she beats her cloth 
so firm that it lasts forever.—There, now, I don’t 
mean that.” Lydia corrected herself, Quaker 
fashion. “ But Mother’s dress of her weaving lasted 
twenty years.” 

At this juncture, who should come in but Stephen 
himself. Lydia began at once. 

“Stephen, thee must remember about the coat. 
Where has thee got it?”’ 

“T haven’t got it, Aunt Lydia. I told thee I did 
stuff it down behind the wood-box just for a joke. 
But I can’t find it now.” 

“Well, it’s very strange,” persisted Lydia, whose 
understanding of boys was none of the best. 
“Peggy has searched and I a4 

“Look here, Aunt Lydia!’’ Stephen’s nice face 
darkened. “I’ve never lied to thee and I’m not 
lying now!” His eyes blinked, and he banged 
down his school books and hurried out. 

If anyone had glanced at Dionis, the truth must 
have been known at once. She stood with lips apart 
and eyes shadowed with horror. 

Stephen under a cloud for her fault. Why, 
Stephen was crying—big Stephen! 

She was on the point of speaking out, confessing 
all. How easy to say, “I took the coat. I gave it to 
Sammie Jetsam.” The reproof, how easy to bear. 
The whipping, how light a thing compared to the 
horror of this guilt. 


126 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


But then there was Mother’s astonishment to be 
reckoned with. “What, thee gave the coat to 
Sammie Jetsam? What in the world was thee doing 
with Sammie Jetsam, and on the Commons too!”’ 
Mother would not only take away the coat, but all 
Sammie’s lessons as well. Dencey’s ideas about 
the whole matter were as unheroic as might be. She 
knew only that she was teaching Sammie to read 
Pilgrim’s Progress and giving him something to eat 
now and then. 

But back of all this concreteness was the curious 
cognizance of childhood. Dencey knew with an 
intensity that equalled its vagueness that if she 
let go of Jetsam, he would tumble back into an 
abyss. Hatred, abuse, filthy talk, and fear—all 
these were in it; and she alone held him back from 
the lip of it. 

This thing clutched her with such power that she 
could not speak. Not even now. 

She slunk like a cat out of the door and went 
through the back gate down to the beach. 

This time she did not weep softly but with actual 
sobbing. 

But still Dencey did not tell about the coat. 


5) 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOOK 


OOKY hyar,” said Jetsam as they closed Pil- 
grim’s Progress for the day. “Ef I tell ye 


suthin’, will ye cross yer heart not to tell?” 

“T don’t make vain oaths,” said the Quaker 
Dencey. ‘What does thee want to tell, anyway?” 

“But will ye tell it?” 

“No, 0’ course not.” 

“Ye know how Injun Jill she tried to git my book. 
Well, thet night I hid it in the wood-pile outside. 
An’ in the middle o’ the night I woke up and thar 
was Injun Jill a-pokin’ around the cabin with a ole 
can’el. She’d felt under my bed, an’ thet’ s what 
woke me. Ye see, my bed’s jist a bag o’ shucks on 
the floor.” 

“Did she find it?” asked Dencey, breathless. 

“No, she didn’t. She got hot, though. After she’d 
poked around into all the corners, she went out into 
the wood-shed. I follered, creepin’ on my hands 
and knees. But hit was awful windy, an’ the wind 
blew out the can’el, an’ she swore an’ come back. 


127 


128 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


I tell ye I hed to make a skip an’ a hop back on to 
my bed and pretend to snore.” 

Jetsam chuckled. Evidently this tale had a 
happy ending. 

* An’ that mornin’ at sun-up, I got up and took 
my book—” As Jetsam said this a small un- 
conscious gesture of the grimy boy hand passed 
softly over the leather cover—‘“ Well, I hid it some- 
whar else. Hit’s a good place, too.” 

“Where is it?” Dencey leaned forward intensely 
with her question. 

*ebewun;ttellisce:” 

“Thee said thee’d tell me. Please, Jetsam.” 

“Ye'd go an’ tell. Girls allus do.” 

“Girls don’t.” Dencey flushed with indignation. 
“Hopestill and me, we have secrets an’ we never 
tell, never, never.”’ 

“Hum-um,” he grunted negatively. “I know. 
Ye’d git mad sometime and then ye’d tell.” 

“T’m mad now,” she declared. “But I wouldn’t 
tell. Thee’s mean, Sam Jetsam, that’s what thee 
ish 

But no threats nor anger moved him. His face 
screwed up into Yankee shrewdness. 

“A secret’s best with jist one,” he asserted. 
An’ that one’s goin’ to be me.’ 

All the way home, Dencey’s indignant thoughts 
were on the book—that treasure hidden away like 
Captain Kidd’s gold on Gardiner’s Island. How 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOOK 129 


mean of Jetsam not to tell her. If she only knew the 
snug hiding place and could fetch it out in defiance 
of Injun Jill, as Jetsam did every day. 

There came a sou’wester to Nantucket—water 
from above pouring in sheets, water all about in 
great breakers lashing the beaches. The little 
island seemed sinking and dissolving into its vast 
home. The very air was salt and could be tasted 
on the lips. 

After this, it was to be observed that the long- 
suffering volume of Pilgrim was covered with blue 
mold. | 

“Hit was gittin’ wet,” acknowledged Jetsam. 
“But it wun’t no more. I got a box yest’d’y—a 
wooden box, good an’ tight. I traded it off a sailor 
fur a hull baskit o’ clams. The box came from Inja 
an’s got heathen pictures all over it. I wrapped the 
book in a shirt an’ put it in the box—whar, I wun’t 
tellye:”’ 

But the very next day he had to tell her every- 
thing. 

He came to the lesson with his eyes snapping 
with excitement. 

“She almost got it,” he cried. “She almost did. 
I was jist hidin’ the box in its hole a 

“What hole?” asked Dencey slyly. 

“Oh, in the side o’ a bank right near our passel 
o’ woods. Thar’s a juniper hangs all over hit like a 
closed hatch. I was puttin’ it in thar when I heard 


130 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


suthin’—ye know a cat can’t go no softer than her 
—an’ thar, less’n a cable’s length away, was athe 
Jill, plain as a lighthus.” 

“What did thee do? What did thee do?” cried 
Dencey. 

“She did fust. ‘I got ye,’ she yells, an’ makes a 
dash. But I was too quick fer her,” boasted the 
boy. “I grabbed the box an’ skipped—like a brig 
in a gale. The cargo was heavy too. Injun Jill, she 
like to ’a’ caught me. But she wus swearin’ so hard 
an’ so tarnal mad she wa’n’t lookin’ good—an’ her 
- foot caught, it did, an’ down she went. ’Fore she 
got up, I was out o’ sight behind the woods.” 

“Oh,” breathed Dencey. She saw the blissful 
terror of the scene. Jetsam running with the heavy 
box. Injun Jill so swift after him—the wicked 
cruelty of her face. 

She beat her hands upon her lap in fine im- 
patience. 

“What will thee do?” she queried. “ What’ll thee 
do now, Sam Jetsam?” 

“T dunno what,” he answered blankly. 

“Thee’ll have to do something quick.” 

In a strange instant all Jetsam’s boasting was 
gone. The terror of Injun Jill came back upon 
him. 

“They hain’t no use to hide it. She’ll find it any- 
ways, she will.” 

Dencey could not understand the change. 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOOK 131 


“Why, no, she can’t,” she declared. ““We can 
hide it the other side of town—’way down by 
Brant Point, if we want to.” 

In the boy’s face was something more than fear. 
Bafflement, a curious hurt, as if he were a sensitive 
girl instead of the hard little waif he was. At such 
times his face went perfectly white and his cheek 
bones stood out prominently. 

“Tnjun Jill, she says I cain’t larn to read.” 

“But thee reads now.” 

“T read like hell,” he answered roughly. “Injun 
Jill, she kep’ at me all night sayin’ I cain’t beat her, 
hidin’ my book, ’cause she’s Indian smart an’ I’m 
only half Indian. She said nasty things about the 
_white man that wus my pap. She says I’m jist 
trash.” | 

Dencey swept to the rescue as if with a banner. 

“Thee isn’t trash, Sam Jetsam. Thee studies 
harder than any boy in the Coffin School. Thee 
learns quick as lightnin’.”’ 

He looked up into her face—not hoping—only 
listening. 

Dencey sprang up and stamped her foot angrily. 

“Thee’s a ’fraid-cat, Sam Jetsam. Come along 
out o’ the barn. I’m going to hide the book myself.” 
- Surprising, but Jetsam got up obediently and 
followed her. She led the way over the wide Com- 
mons, now by little sheep paths, now striking 
straight across among the low huckleberries and 


132 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


mealy-plum. Apparently, she knew exactly where 
she was going. From a hilltop spread the gray 
infinity of sea. 

“Hurry,” she said. 

They scrambled down the bank and through the 
high spear grass, to the white pure beach, desolate, 
untouched. The only sign that life had ever been 
there was the wreck of a ketch, dismasted and half 
buried in the sand. 

“We'll hide it in the ketch,” said Dencey 
breathlessly. “We can put the box down in the 
hold.” 

Jetsam had by this time caught the spark. 

“No, I'll tell ye,” he answered. ‘The ketch has 
got a bowsprit—part o’ one, anyways. We'll use 
that for a sighter. Here, ye take the box and I’ll 
go to the ketch an’ sight along her bowsprit. An’ 
when ye comes to the spot the bowsprit pints to, 
Ill sing out, an’ ye stop.” 

He ran to the wreck and, lying flat on the deck, 
squinted along the spar. 

“Port,” he shouted. “Starboard—starboard agin. 
Halt—lay to.” 

Now all breathless, he joined Dencey. They 
began to dig in the sand as if life depended on it. 
Dencey with bare hands, and Jetsam with a stick 
he had brought from the ketch. 

“This place is above spring tide even,” he said. 
“See all the spear grass?” 


THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOOK 133 


“But can we find it really when we want it?” 

“’Course we kin. Nothin’s sure as sightin’.” 

For once Dencey forgot the lesson. The hiding of 
the treasure possessed her mind. As they dug, the 
sea kept up its whispering, pouring sound. Far out 
on the gray, a loon called—a wild pure note like the 
ultimate expression of solitude. 

Dencey stood up, straightened her back, and 
looked down the length of the Island. Seen thus 
along the edge, the shore seemed to stretch end- 
lessly, cape after cape—then beach, then cape 
again, and the white lips of the sea gravely touching 
it, and the mist stealing in over the water. 

“We can’t see Tuckernuck to-day,” she said 
dreamily. 

What satisfaction to know that the book was 
safe at last. The children did not question why 
Injun Jill wanted it. They only knew she mustn’t 
get it. They knew somehow that Jetsam’s escape 
lay in that hidden treasure. 


CHAPTER XxX 


INJUN JILL KNOWS 


ot baer is a saying which begins, “If looks 


could kill.” It implies that looks cannot 

kill, and like most wise saws, it is not true. 
The looks which Injun Jill was casting over toward 
Sammie Jetsam were effectually killing any tender- 
ness or trust which might be in the boy’s charac- 
ter. 

They were shut in the little cottage. Jetsam was 
pretending not to see her as he crouched low 
against the smouldering hearth. But he was watch- 
ing Injun Jill with furtive misery. 

“Awful smard hidin’ fro’ Indion Jeel,’”’ she mur- 
mured in the Nantucket Indian jargon he knew so 
well. “Go many blaces but Indion Jeel knowth all 
blaces—she knowth all times.”’ 

Sam did not answer but began raking the embers 
together for warmth and light. ~ 

“Ye say, ‘me go into down.’ Nobody seen ye on 

134 


INJUN JILL KNOWS 135 


docks yesdy. Nobody seen ye in down, an’ Sammie 
‘way all tay.” 

This seemed a great joke, for Indian Jill tittered 
and chuckled as she began to bang her loom. Every 
bang seemed to hit Jetsam with a new fear. How 
often in his babyhood that banging had stopped 
suddenly to give him an unexpected blow. He 
looked away. What did she know? What would she 
say next? 

“Whar wus ye?” she demanded. 

Only silence. 

“Ye answer me. I kin peat ye yet, Sam Jeshum.” 

This was true. Injun Jill’s strength was that of 
some sturdy pony—little and bent though she 
was. 

“Fishin’,” said Sam. 

“Whar’s the feesh?”’ 

“Didn’t ketch none.” 

“Liar. Lyin’ scoundrelth. Jest like white daddy. 
Think ye’re petter nor Indion Jeel. Oh, lots petter.” 

Oh, the scorn of this. The bitterness of those little 
beady eyes. The bitterness in the very air of the 
cottage. All the outward aspect of the place—its 
age-old untidiness, dirt and rags in corners, two 
little windows so caked with dust that only a faint 
gray light came through—the low closed-in-ness— 
the abominable smell—all these were but the show- 
ing of that inward bitterness that dwelt there and 
flourished its thorny life. 


136 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


With a half-sob the boy sprang up and flung him- 
self toward the door. 

“Bring wood, ye slaggard,” rasped Injun Jill’s 
voice after him. And it showed the hag’s ascend- 
ancy over him that the boy did bring the wood and 
threw his thunderous armful on the hearth. 

When he had been a tiny babe, this authority 
of Injun Jill had set its clutches deep into his 
spirit. Had some courage in him been killed then? 
He had no strength to loose that hold. 

As he sat again upon the hearth, Injun Jill came 
leaning over him. He flung up his arm to ward off 
her blow, but she did not cuff him. Instead she 
said: 

“Ye goeth Prown barn, Sam Jeshum. I watch ye. 
That leetle minx, Dence Coff’n, she go all blaces 
wit ye.” 

Sam sprang up, backing away and whimpering. 

“Hi, hi, yi, thet skeerth ye, does it? Indion Jeel 
watch once.” She told it off with her fingers. “In- 
dion Jeel watch dwo dimes, Indion Jeel ketch !”’ 

She turned her back and trudged over to the loom 
shaking with laughter. 

“Dence Coff’n, Dence Coff’n,” she crooned, 
“Tndion Jeel ketch. Then Dence Coff’n nobody see 
anny more.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE ADVENTURE OF DENCEY 


T WAS a strange and wild-eyed Jetsam that 
| Dencey discovered next day sitting in the sand 

by the old ketch. 

“Couldn’t thee find the book?” she asked 
anxiously. 

“T hain’t tried.” 

“But thee must try. We must get our lesson. We 
didn’t have it yesterday.” 

He kept looking straight in front of him, not at 
Dencey. 

“Tnjun Jill don’t want the book no more,” he 
said dully. 

“Then we needn’t hide it any more?” Dencey 
was plainly disappointed. But he did not hear 
her. 

“Hit’s you, Dencey Coffyn,” he announced, 
turning suddenly upon her. “Hit’s you she 
wants.” 

137 


138 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Me? Injun Jill?” 
Jetsam nodded. Dencey’s healthy tan faded to a 


gray. 

“What for?’ she whispered. 

“Cause ye teaches me to read. She says nobody 
sha’n’t teach me but her. Her teach!’’ His upper lip 
curled back in scorn. 

“What’ll she do?” gasped Dencey. 

“Beat ye! Beat ye tell ye can’t stand up. That’s 
what she does to me.’’ Jetsam paused, then said 
with that fatalism which always beset him: 

“She says she’ll ketch ye. An’ if she says it, 
she’ll do it.” 

The two children stared at each other, too fright- 
ened to plan. 

“An’ now,” the boy went on, “now ye won't 
come no more.” 

Dencey stood breathing hard. 

“Ye'd better go quick,” he advised. 

“Yes,” she answered. 

Then she turned and half ran along the beach 
toward home. 

She glanced back. Jetsam sat just as she had 
left him, staring out over the water—a small 
figure there on the wide desolate beach—waiting. 
Waiting for what? For Injun Jill. There was 
nothing else for him to wait for. Only Injun 
Jill. 


Dencey’s going began to be slower—slower. Het 


THE ADVENTURE OF DENCEY 139 


feet seemed weighted. Never had the sand been 


so deep, so sifty. 
She looked back again. 


New England Responsibility! Eight generations 
had bred it into Dencey Coffyn. It had begun long 
ago in the New England faith in immortality— 
their vivid sense of their unending life. They were 
responsible for their own immortal souls, responsi- 
ble for the souls of their neighbors, responsible for 
the town, responsible for the state. 

The dynamic of the old New Englander’s re- 
sponsibility still lives and keeps the decency of our 
American cities. No wonder it could weight the 


feet of one little girl running away. 


Dencey stopped. She turned about, stared at 
Jetsam’s huddled figure, now a speck in the lonely 
distance. And with a little sob, half for him, half 
for herself, Dencey started back. 

Her head was down. She walked swiftly along 
the beach, not looking. 

Suddenly Jetsam was beside her, breathless from 
running. 

Fool and blind, he did not notice that Dencey 
was coming, not going. Fool and blind, he blurted 
out the purpose with which he had sprung up to run 
after her. 

“Come back,” he shouted. “Ve've got to. I 


hain’t forgive ye, I tell ye. I hain’t forgive ye yit.” 


140 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Dencey stopped short. Her anger blazed, a sud- 
den fire. 

She had been coming back to him, and he—he 
could say this mean and ugly threat. Her pity, her 
kindness, her purpose, all swept into the burning. 

“Sam Jetsam,” she sobbed. “Thee is a mean, 
mean, mean despiseable boy. I won’t come back. 
If thee can’t forgive me, thee needn’t. I don’t care. 
I don’t care one bit.” 

Jetsam had a sudden inkling that he had done 
some mischief. He had more than an inkling that 
his hold on Dencey Coffyn was completely gone. 

He began to follow after her, aimless, puzzled, 
frightened. As for Dencey, she was fairly running 
from him. 

“Come back,” he insisted. “I don’t want ye to 
go.” 

She pushed on, head down. 
“We kin fight Injun Jill—the both on us. I'll 
knock her down an’ ye can kick her.” 

Dencey shuddered, still hurrying. 

“T’ll fight her myself. Say, I won’t let her hurt 
Vous 
No use. A light was slowly dawning in Jetsam’s 
mind. 

“Say,” he faltered at last. “I didn’t mean that 
thar about not forgivin’ ye. I allus did forgive ye. 
Please come back.” 

Dencey paused. 


THE ADVENTURE OF DENCEY 141 


LP EB) 


“T was comin’,” she asserted. “I won’t now.” 

“Ye wus comin’?” Jetsam was blankly aston- 
ished. 

“Yes, looky there, my tracks. I’d gone ’way up 
there to that rock.” 

Sure enough, there were the two sets of stubby 
footprints—the going ones and the coming ones. 

Jetsam was fearfully puzzled. Why had she come 
back if she didn’t care for the forgiveness? Why had 
she run away again at his threat? Why did it 
frighten him so not to understand it? And now, all 
of a sudden, he didn’t want her to come back and 
get hurt by Injun Jill. Gee Whillikins, he was going 
to cry! Why, even Injun Jill couldn’t make him cry 
these days. 

All the time, he dug one toe into the sand, breath- 
ing short and hard and saying nothing. 

“Well, Sam Jetsam, if thee doesn’t want me, I 
can go home. I’d lots rather, anyway.” 

Dencey’s voice broke in upon the miserable 
shadows and woke him up. 

“Course I want ye,” he said roughly. “Ye come 
along.” 


SPs a , vy) Be 
PeXG Series eat 


CHAPTER XXII 


INJUN JILL PURSUES 


ae KIN do the sightin’,” Jetsam said 


generously as they came to the ketch. And 
Dencey, greatly honored, lay on the old 
rotten deck squinting along the bowsprit. She did 
not “sight”? so accurately as Jetsam, but finally 
the lacquered box was found and the book lifted 
out. Then the two sat down together on the sand. 
They were come to an unfortunate chapter— 


“*And in the midst of the valley I perceived the 
mouth of hell to be, and ever and anon flame and 
smoke would come out in such abundance. .. . Also 
he heard doleful voices and rushings to and fro. 
Christian resolved to go on. Yet the fiends seemed 
to come nearer and nearer.’”’ 


The children were ill at ease. Jetsam kept glanc- 
ing behind him as he read. Dencey steadfastly kept 
142 


INJUN JILL PURSUES 143 


her eyes on the text. But her finger trembled, 
following the lines. 


eee 


Just as he was come over against the mouth of 
the pit, one of the wicked ones gat behind him, and 
whisperingly suggested grievous blasphemies to 
him.’”’ 


This was too much. Both children looked behind 
at once. Jetsam forgot to read. Dencey jumped to 
her feet and began fishing in the folds of her dress 
for her pocket. 

“T—I forgot something.” She gasped a little as 
she spoke. “It’s writing—so thee can learn to 
write. I stol—took it out of a barrel in the attic.” 

She opened it, glad of the activity. 

“Did ye write it?”’ 

“No. It’s a sermon. Uncle Hubert’s. He died 
years an’ years ago.” 

She read the title. 

“*The Sin of Marrying a Deceased Wife’s 
Sister.’”’ 

“What’s that?” queried Jetsam. “What kind of 
a sister is that?” 

“T don’t know, only this says it’s a sin to marry 
her:”’ 

“Well, who’d marry his sister anyways? That’s 
silly.” 

“No, it isn’t. It’s a Congregationalist sermon. 
Thee mustn’t call a sermon silly.” 


144 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


The argument did them good. They began to 
read the book again, choosing another place. 


“And in that town there is a fair kept called 
Vanity Fair. Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion 
contrived that it should last all the year long. There- 
fore at this fair are all such merchandise sold as 
houses, trades, honors, titles, delights of all sorts, 
bodies, souls, silver, gold, precious stones and what 
not.” 


Jetsam looked up with shining eyes. 

“Whar d’ye s’pose that town is?’’ he asked. 

“Well, it isn’t in Nantucket,”’ declared Dencey. 
“Tt must be on the Main.” 

“T’m goin’ to ask some o’ the sailors about that 
thar port,” he said. “They'll know it, shore.” He 
bent quickly to the book again. 


““And moreover at this Fair is to be seen jug- 
gling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and 
that of every kind. Here are to be seen and that 
for nothing, thefts, murders, false swears and that 
of a blood-red color.’”’ 


“Lordy,” he breathed. “I wisht I could go thar.” 

Dencey was properly horrified. 

“Why, Sam Jetsam, thee mustn’t wish that. 
That’s light and worldly pleasures. And look who’s 
head of the Fair, Beelzebub and Apollyon.” 


} 


i 
) 


INJUN JILL PURSUES 146 


“T don’t keer, I’m goin’ to see it some day. ‘A 
false-sweater and that of a blood-red color,’” he 
mused. “An’ monkeys, Lordy!” 

“But, Jetsam, look here, when thee reads 
further 

But they did not read further. A shadow fell 
suddenly across the page. 

There was Injun Jill—the foul fiend herself— 
grinning and terrible. 

With one shriek the children scattered. Injun 
Jill’s quick grab at them met the empty air. She 
had been so sure of her prey that at the miss she 
stumbled forward. This gave them time. They 
scampered. They fairly flew over the sand. Jetsam 
clasped the book. Dencey lifted her great bundle of 
skirts in both hands and actually kept up with 
Jetsam. Terror gave her wings. It was _ herself 
Injun Jill was after. Herself and no other. 

They scrambled up the bank and began to run 
over the rough Commons. Injun Jill’s head ap- 
peared above the bank just behind them. 

“Hi,I git ye,” she triumphed. “I ketch—Whoo!” 

On they ran. Here, in the tangle of huckleberry, 
Injun Jill had the advantage. 

Once Dencey tripped on a blackberry brier, but 
with a mounting prayer was up again. 

But Injun Jill was gaining. She was almost upon 
them. It would be only a moment more, and 
then—— 


146 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Suddenly Jetsam shoved against her. He thrust 
the book into her hand. 

“Hyar, take it!’ he gasped. 

Even amid their running, Dencey saw the mean- 
ness of the deed. He was giving her the book so he 
could run light and get away. She clasped it 
mechanically amid her skirts and was sharply aware 
of a stitch in her side. Oh, could she run any more? 

“No—thet way. Thet way!” Jetsam screamed, 
pointing to the town. “Not with me!”’ 

He disappeared. She ran as he had pointed. It 
was his purpose pushed her. She did not know 
where she was going. She ran pelting, panting, ex- 
hausted, the book in her arms. 

But now she no longer heard Injun Jill behind 
her. 

She glanced back. 

There was Jetsam quite far away right in front 
of Injun Jill. Now he dodged under her elbow, so 
she whirled about in fury. But he had dodged quite 
another way. Injun Jill, bewildered by her scattered 
enemies, started toward Dencey. Jetsam yelled 
some taunt at her, and she started toward him 
again. | 

Ah, he was far away over the Commons. 

A light broke upon Dencey. 

Jetsam had run back to save her. He had run 
almost into Injun Jill’s arms. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE PROMISE 


AY night long Dionis puzzled over her 


problem. How could she ever meet Jetsam 
again? 

She could not go to Brown’s barn. Injun Jill 
knew that place. Not to the old ketch—surely! 
Could she go out into the Commons and just wait? 
With the chance that Injun Jill would find her and 
destroy? 

Meanwhile, she had the Pilgrim’s Progress. This 
was worst of all. What would Jetsam do without 
it? How could she ever get it to him? 

Trudging to school next morning she thought 
and thought about it. Coming home, she thought 
again. Then, suddenly, there was no need to think 
about it any more. 

Her mother met her at the kitchen door, stern, 
white, and silent. She led her upstairs and into 
“Mother’s Room.” She closed the door. Then— 

147 


148 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


‘“‘Dionis, is it true thee went out to Brown’s barn 
and met that boy called Jetsam?” 

The doom had sounded like a solemn bell. 
“Mother’s Room” looked queer, as if Dionis had 
never seen it before. The awful silence! It did not 
occur to Dencey to speak. 

“Answer me, Dionis.” 

“Mother,” she gasped, “how did thee know?” 

“Never mind. Oh, does that mean that thee 
did?” Lydia’s voice broke with agitation. 

“Yes, Mother—at Brown’s barn and on the 
beach, too.” 

“Oh, then Injun Jill was right. I thought she was 
only crazy.” 

Lydia’s face whitened. The child would be 
branded as a bad little girl. Lydia herself would 
be blamed for not keeping better watch. The Com- 
mittee on Sufferings would come and publicly repri- 
mand her. 

“Child,” she faltered, “why did thee do it?” 

“T had to go.” 

“Had to! Nonsense! Doesn’t thee know he is the 
worst boy in the whole town? No respectable boys 
will play with him. But thee—a nice little girl!” 

Dencey looked up, catching the scare. 

“He swears,” she said doubtfully. “He says 
awful things about our Lord.” 

“But didn’t that offend thee?” 

“Yes. I—I made him stop. But he does it again.” 


THE PROMISE 149 


Lydia held her daughter’s arm trembling. Injun 
Jill had said dreadful things about Lydia’s little 
girl. She had appeared suddenly at the kitchen door 
and said them. Right before Peggy, too. 

“What did you play together? Tell me. Did he 
touch thee?” 

“Touch me? Why, Mother. He wouldn’t want 
to. An’ his hands are just black. An’ he won’t wash 
at all, ’cepting in the sea.” 

Lydia breathed relief. She dropped Dencey’s 
arm. 

“And thee always tells the truth, child. That I 
know.” 

“No, I don’t,’’ Dencey answered. “Oh, Mother, 
I’ve lied and lied to thee.” 

Suddenly a great lot of ripples started up and 
down Dencey’s throat. She couldn’t swallow them. 
It was because she was glad. This whole encounter 
changed for her in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye. It wasn’t a calamity. It was a relief, a rescue, 
the thing she had longed for, for ages. Now she 
could tell all—sweep the decks clear. 

“Yes, I lied to thee,” she sobbed. “An’ I stole 
too. It was me took Steve’s coat, an’ I lied about it. 
An’ I took bread an’ cake an’ things an’ gave ’em 
to Jetsam. He was so hungry. And, oh, Mother, 
will I go to hell?” 

Aunt Lovesta would have gathered the little girl 
in her arms. She would by small tender encourage- 


150 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


ments have got the whole story. Lydia was frozen. 
Fear for her child swept her. If Dencey lied, how 
could Lydia ever exonerate her? 

“Dionis—oh, I thought I had brought thee up in 
the fear of the Lord. Thee has been stealing, thee 
says, and lying to me. Why did thee lie? I have 
never whipped thee nor made thee afraid. It was 
cruel to treat me like that. Oh, if thy father were 
only here!” 

Miserable was Dencey at this outburst from her 
mother. The sin had evidently been worse than 
Dencey had imagined. Surely Mother had some 
remedy. 

“Couldn’t Grandfather whip me?’ she suggested. 
“Wouldn’t that help?” 

““No, it will only help for thee to stop lying, stop 
stealing, stop touching the pitch and playing with 
that boy who swears and curses his God.” 

“But I wasn’t playing, Mother.” 

“What was thee doing, then? Do speak out.” 

“T was teaching him to read,” Dencey faltered. 

Lydia leaned toward her, puzzled yet eager. 

“Teaching him? Child, however did thee happen 
to do that? Is thee telling the truth?” 

“Oh, yes, Mother,’ Dencey sobbed suddenly. 
“T won't lie to thee now. I’II—I’ll never lie to thee 
again.” 

Lydia took Dencey’s hands. Two big tears rolled 
down her cheeks. 


THE PROMISE I51 


“T believe thee, Dionis,” she said. “Now, how 
did thee happen to teach him?’ 

“Because he wouldn’t forgive me.” 

“Forgive thee! For what?” 

Could it be that Mother had forgotten that 
Judgment Day when the heavens rolled up as a 


‘scroll? 


“Why, Mother, for hitting him with a stone. And 
thee couldn’t go with me because of Martha White, 
an’ I went, an’ he broke my ammonite shell, an’— 
an’ I gave him Pilgrim’s Progress, an’ then he 
wouldn’t forgive me until I’d teach him. An’ I 
taught him an’ taught him. He learns quick. Not 
a bit like those silly babies at school. And, oh, 
Mother, yesterday, he did forgive me, and I don’t 
nave to go out there any—any more!”’ 

What a relief! It was all over. Dencey could go 
her own quiet way now—lead a respectable life 
and enjoy herself. She smiled through her tears. 

Lydia bent solemnly and kissed her. 

“Tet us thank the Lord, Dionis,”’ she said. “For 
it is He and not another that has put thee in this 
tender frame of mind.” 

Dencey squirmed a little, then knelt down by her 
mother’s side. The very walls of “ Mother’s Room” 
must have known the feel of rising prayer. 

As they got to their feet, Lydia said quietly: 

“And now, Dionis, thee can go to the keeping 
room and mind little Hannah. Remember, Mother 


132 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


trusts thee that thee will never see Injun Jill’s boy 
again.” 

How fatal the words sounded, not comfortable 
at all. Dencey’s eyes clouded. 

“But,” she hesitated, “I have to give him back 
the book.” 

“What book?” 

“ Pilgrim’s Progress. He gave it to me and ran 
back to Injun Jill so she couldn’t hurt me. So— 
so I have to give it back.” 

“What does thee mean, child? Surely not the 
big Pilgrim’s Progress ? I have been looking every- 
where for that to read to the little boys.”’ 

“But, Mother, it was my book. I gave it to Jet- 
sam.” 

“Yes, Father gave it to thee. But it was really 
for all of us. We have no other copy. Where is it?” 

“Tn my room.” 

“Go and get it.” 

Dencey went up to her room. Her feet were like 
lead upon the stair. She reached far under the bed 
and brought out the fat volume. It smote her with 
ail the hours of labor she and Jetsam had spent 
upon it. The hiding in the sand, the escape of 
yesterday when Jetsam had thrust it into her hand. 
It was Jetsam’s, that book, as preciously his as the 
house was Father’s and Mother’s. 

She took it downstairs. Trembling, she gave it to 
her mother: 


THE PROMISE 153 


> 


“It’s Jetsam’s,” she said. “I gave it to him.” 

Lydia saw the book with horror. 

“Why, it’s ruined!” she exclaimed. “Thy beauti- 
ful book from Father.” She began turning over the 
dog-eared leaves. 

“He couldn’t help it,” Dencey insisted. “Injun 
Jill tried to steal it from him, and he buried it in the 
Commons. It’s Jetsam’s,” she repeated, a fear 
growing, growing in her heart. “I gave it to him.” 

“Thee did very wrong. It was not thine to give 
away.” 

“But I did give it to him. And he hasn’t got any 
other. Please, Mother. We’ve got Fox’s Journal and 
Josephus and Besse’s Sufferings, and Jetsam’s only 
got this. Don’t take it away, Mother. Don’t take it 
away!” 

Dencey seemed to see Jetsam’s dirty hand pass- 
ing up and down over the cover. 

Lydia sat silent in judgment. At last she said: 

“Thee was wrong. But thee did give hin the 
book, so the boy must have it. But does he care sa 
much to read it?”’ 

“Yes. Oh, yes. He works hard and gets every 
lesson. He reads almost as good as me.”’ 

Lydia smiled. “I'll tell thee what I'll do. [ll 
see the Fragment Society to-day and ask them to 
take him into their school, and I'll give the book to 
him myself.” 

“But I want to give it to him.” 


154 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Thee cannot. We agreed thee was not to see 
him again. He is not fit to play with thee or with 
any well-bred child.” 

Higher and higher came the rising tide of misery 
in Dencey’s mind. Jetsam with the Fragment boys 
who hated him with united hatred. They’d never 
speak to him. They’d only stone him the way they 
always did. Jetsam was all alone now. How strange 
it would be when Mother gave him the book. Then 
he’d know Dencey despised him. Everybody de- 
spised him. 

All the old pity and the burden of it came back, 
as if it fitted itself into a worn place on her shoulders. 
She couldn’t despise Jetsam when everybody was 
despising him like that. 

“Mother, I want to give him the book. Mother, I 
must give him the book.” Dencey’s voice was. 
shrill. It sounded impudent. 

“Dionis, what a strange turn! Thee must promise 
right now not to see the boy again.” 

An abyss had yawned. And Dencey stood on the 
brink of it. She answered never a word. 

“Dionis, does thee hear me?” 

“Yes, Mother,” huskily. “But I won’t promise.” 

“Dionis, what does thee mean? Thee said just 
now thee would never see him again.” 

“T—I didn’t mean it. I won’t promise.” Her 
voice was loud again. It had a ring in it that Lydia 
should have recognized. For it was something of her 


THE PROMISE 155 


own stubbornness—or shall one say, her martyr 
spirit? 

“Dionis, I have to protect thee from slanderous 
tongues—things thee in no wise understands. Thee 
must never see the boy again, and thee has got to 
promise me that.” 

Dencey began to cry and sob. She was very 
frightened—as much at her own sudden determi- 
nation as at her mother’s gentle threats. 

Lydia applied the last desperate remedies. 
Grandfather was to whip Dencey and then she was 
to stay in her own room on bread and water until 
she promised. The first was accomplished with 
much sorrow to all parties. Then Dencey was 
directed to her room. She looked at the white un- 
broken walls on which played the wavering re- 
flection of the burnished sea. 

“All the rest of my life I’ve got to sit here and see 
that,” she thought. 

For she knew she would never promise. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE UNSPEAKABLE JETSAM 


TT sie time Lydia kept her promise. She went 


that same afternoon to the head of the 

Fragment Society and urged him to take 
Jetsam into the school. She explained how the boy 
already had mastered the art of reading with (Lydia 
hesitated) “almost no help at all.” 

“But,” objected the old shipowner, “‘we have 
already tried that boy in the school. He failed— 
failed utterly. Bad as some of our poor boys are, 
that boy is worse. Lydia, thee must know that he is 
the worst boy in town. Lawless—perfectly lawless.” 

Lydia gasped but she kept her conscientious 
purpose. “Isn’t that the more reason to reach out 
to him?”’ she asked. “Doesn’t he need thy Frag- 
ment School more than thy other boys?” 

“No, Lydia, no. He demoralizes the whole. We 
had him for a week. Why, the school was in turmoil. 

156 


THE UNSPEAKABLE JETSAM 17 


Fights in the yard the entire time. Boys coming in 
with broken heads. And at the end of that time the 
Jetsam boy ran away.” 

“Perhaps,” Lydia said, remembering Dionis’s 
earlier story—“perhaps the Fragment boys set 
upon him.” 

“Maybe they did. Maybe they did. If so, he was 
a match for all of ’em.”’ The old man chuckled. 
“Anyways, Lydia’—he sobered—‘‘when the 
teacher Keziah went for him she found him down 
by the wharf in the lowest pub. And when she bade 
him return, he blasphemed her. Oh, beyond all 
belief in so young a boy. Keziah’s face burned teil- 
ing it. No, no, Lydia. It’s quite impossible to have 
him. I wonder at thee for urging it.”’ 

All this did not reassure Lydia as to her daugh- 
ter’s recent companion. How could her child, so well 
raised, have chosen him? And how could she have 
gone out to see him day after day? Horrible! Lydia 
walked home in a bad dream. 

Yet she must deliver the Pilgrim’s Progress. For 
so she had promised. She got old Ezra Coleman to 
take her in his cart out to Injun Jill’s cabin— 
unspeakable place to be called home for anyone. 
But the boy was not there. Nor Injun Jill either. 
The house stood sagging and forlorn in the wide 
billows of the moors. Next day Lydia watched for 
the boy on State Street. She even ventured down 
to the wharf. All to no purpose. 


158 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Meanwhile, Dionis was still in her room. When 
Lydia went in, she was met by that obstinate, 
tragic little face. Three times a day Lydia put down 
the prison fare in front of her child, until the sight 
of the bread and water made Lydia sick. And all 
this was due to that ragamuffin of a boy whom the 
mother scarcely knew by sight. 

“Child,” said Lydia. “Remember, every time I 
come in, it is a chance for thee to speak. I am wait- 
ing for thy promise.” 

“T can’t promise,” Dencey returned. And later, 
with a stamp of her foot: “I won’t promise.” 

There began in Lydia’s mind a veritable hatred 
of the boy who had thus estranged her child. Had 
she been aware of the feeling, Lydia would have 
met and downed it. But she was too anxious over 
her problem with Dencey to notice this enemy of 
her spirit. 

Not until Fourth Day morning did Lydia meet 
Jetsam on Orange Street. 

“Wait,” she commanded. “I have something for 
thee.” 

“What is it?”’ he returned. “A whuppin’?” 

“Thee is an impudent boy,” said Lydia, viewing 
with displeasure the smart grin on Jetsam’s face. 
“No, I want to give thee thy book, Pilgrim’s 
Progress. Wait where thee is. I will bring it.” 

She hurried home. She had no idea of bringing 


THE UNSPEAKABLE JETSAM 159 


Jetsam to the gate and thus encouraging him about 
the place. 

As she came back again, the pathos of the little 
waiting figure struck her in spite of her dislike. 
She actually thought of a rabbit on hind legs look- 
ing and listening. And when she gave him the book, 
how hungrily he snatched it. 

“T thought she wus lyin’,” he said, quite to the 
book—not to Lydia. Then he looked up. What 
wide-apart eyes conspicuous in his dirty face. 

“Ts it so that her granddad whups her every 
mornin’ before breakfast ?’’ he demanded. 

“Whips? Does thee mean Dionis? Of course not!” 

“The Coffin boys says so. They heard her 
scream. I reckon he does whup ’er.” 

His face whitened and began to quiver with 
fury. “He’s got to stop it, the dirty scoundrel. She 
hain’t done nothin’.” 

“T tell thee he does not whip Dencey,” said Lydia 
angrily. But Jetsam had already darted down 
Stone Alley. 

As Lydia went home, she suddenly realized that 
the ragged coat the boy had worn was the lost one 
of Stephen’s. It seemed to effect a link between her 
daughter and the boy that baffled all her reasoning 
about it. 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE PRISONER 


EANWHILE Dionis sat in her room. 

M The first day was not so bad. Dionis 

wept for two mortal hours which, after all, 
is an occupation in itself. Then she slept and did not 
waken until Mother brought in her bread-and- 
water supper. Then Mother and Steve took away 
Rosie’s trundle bed. For Dencey must be quite 
alone. This was awful, of course. She was a criminal 
whom nobody must see or touch. Yet tragedy also 
is occupation. 

The next day began the real trial of imprison- 
ment—the minutes like hours, the hours like days. 
From her window she saw the fishing boats sail 
slowly out of the harbor into an infinity of irides- 
cent pearl. She had always despised fishermen and 
their smelly nets. But, oh, how gladly would she 
have fished all her life—if only to get out and away. 

160 


THE PRISONER 161 


The room was suffocating. She heard the boys 
talking downstairs. Companionship. She opened 
the door a crack to listen. Oh, dear, the pop-overs 
and coffee, how good they smelled. And just then 
Mother came in with bread and water. 

Dencey turned her head from it. 

“Take it away,” she said wildly. “I won’t eat 
it.” And her mother silently departed. 

There was no sense of guilt now—only the 
terrible sense of being trapped—some hidden thing 
that had snapped to and held her. She walked up 
and down the room—that room so filled with the 
live restlessness of the sea. The presence of the sea 
was at all the windows, but Dencey was held fast. 
She sat still in her chair looking out. 

She could see Steve coming back from his work, 
and Kanah weeding the garden. She saw Peggy 
hang the clothes on the line. Such a lot. She counted 
them over and over. Hannah’s dresses. And Ariel’s 
cute little clothes, and, oh, a world of underthings 
for the four boys, and Jane’s English muslin. That 
had been washed for sheep-shearing, for English 
goods was worn only on holidays. 

The day seemed to ride like some grand Presence 
up over the arch of the sky; then, slowly, slowly de- 
cline down the changing west. And all the while the 
bells told off the hours of its life. The new Lisbon 
bell in the tower and the ships’ bells in the harbor, 
each its own way—land language and sea language. 


162 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


And each day as it came and passed over, moved 
more slowly than the last. A week had passed—two 
weeks. Dencey did not know. What difference did 
it make when she had to stay here always? She 
hardly ever thought of Jetsam or why she had to 
stay. She was too sorry for herself. 

There began to grow in Dencey’s mind a slow 
anger against her mother—Mother coming in three 
times a day with the horrid bread and water and 
saying the same thing. Lydia saw the anger grow- 
ing and it terrified her. But what could she do? 
Lydia had been glad that Lovesta was away so that 
she could deal with her child unhampered. Now she 
wished with all her heart that Lovesta were here to 
help her out of the impasse. 

Then came the worst day of all. 

It had never occurred to Dencey that she could 
be left out of Sheep-shearing Day, that concen- 
trated loveliness of all the days of the year. It was 
a compensation for Christmas, which the little 
Nantucketers never celebrated. But more ad- 
venturous than Christmas, out in the open Com- 
mons, under the open sky. 

“But, Mother,” wailed Dencey. “I have to go 
to Sheep-shearing. Nobody never doesn’t go to the 
Shearing Day!” 

“Yes, child, and Mother wants thee to go. There 
is no reason why thee shouldn’t. Thee has only to 
promise.” 


THE PRISONER 163 


“Promise,” thought Dencey confusedly. Why, 
she’d almost forgotten all about it. Well, if she was 
shut up like this, she couldn’t see Jetsam anyway. 
It was six of one and half a dozen of the other. 
Suppose she did promise. Then she could go to the 
Sheep-shearing. She looked up with that consent 
in her eyes which you see in a dog about to obey. 

Lydia aided her a little. 

“Thee knows thee doesn’t have to play with 
Jetsam. Hopestill wouldn’t dream of playing with 
him. Nor Elkanah, nor Bob. Why even the Frag- 
ment boys find him impossible. Captain Worth 
said so.” 

Ah, that was it. Nobody would play with Jetsam. 
Nobody would touch Jetsam—not even the Frag- 
ment boys. He was alone—alone. And how would 
it seem to turn her back on him if she met him on 
the street? She, Dencey Coffyn. How would he look 
when she did it? A frightened light flickered over 
Dencey’s face. 

“T can’t promise,” she said loudly. “I told thee 
I can’t, and I can’t.” 

Then, suddenly, she doubled up in her chair, like 
that little pine on the Commons, striving before a 
gale, and she wept and sobbed and gulped. 

So Lydia left her. 


39 


noe 
| tt ai 


BLU 


CHAPTER XXVI 
THE SHEARING 


HEARING Day dawned, tragic, beautiful as 
S some impending Fate. It was full of the un- 
earthly happenings that can take place only 

on Shearing Day. 

The great baskets in the kitchen were piled high 
with hams, roast mutton, cake, gingerbread, and 
shearing-buns, and covered with Great-grand- 
mother’s napkins, woven especially for the Shearing 
Festival. Dencey knew this as she knew that the 
sun rose. She could hear the commotion in the 
kitchen—everybody busy making the morning tasks 
fly. Everybody in everybody else’s way, but nobody 
mad about it, because it was Shearing Morning. 

Ah, there came out Jane into the back yard 
taking in the big festive tablecloth that had been 
airing. A new wave of realization came over Dencey 

164 


THE SHEARING 165 


at the sight. For the awful truth seemed to forget 
itself at times and come over again in waves like 
that. 

Oh, dear—oh, dear. Now she heard the clatter 
of the springless carts driving up to the front door, 
and the rush of the children through the hallway 
to pile into them. They were going—all of them— 
actually going. Without her! 

Suddenly Mother appeared, breathless and 
flushed with hurry. She put down a little basket. 

“T thought it was right thee should have it,” she 
said. “There’s one of every kind’—she meant 
sandwiches—“‘and cake. And here’s thy sampler.” 

Dencey was so angry that she dared not look up 
for fear it would burst out. She hid her face. 

“Hopestill made the pound-rounds ’specially for 
thee,” added Mother. She waited, but still Dencey 
did not speak. Then Mother went away. 

And now the two carts went-clattering down the 
cobbled street. 

A deathly silence fell upon the house which had 
been so full of glad, living clamor. The voice of the 
sea gradually became audible in the room, whisper- 
ing over and over as if it would say something but 
never saying it. The wind sighed about the corners 
of the house and shook the shutters. Dencey’s 
misery settled down over her like a cloud. 

She didn’t cry out loud, only the tears seemed 
like a teacup that was too full and kept joggling 


166 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


over. And Mother thought sandwiches and cake 
could make up for losing the Shearing Festival. If 
she threw the basket out of the window, then 
Mother’d see how she felt. 

Ah, there went another cart clattering down the 
street. That would be the Severances, and Hope- 
still in among them. Another cart still. The Joys 
would be in that. Yet another cart went by, and 
after a silent interval, two more. 

Suddenly, it occurred to Dencey that she was the 
only one left on North Water Street. Everybody 
had gone to the Shearing. Why, for the matter of 
that, she was the only one in the whole town. In all 
Nantucket were just empty houses, and she sitting 
alone in the emptiest one of all. In spite of the 
bright sunshine, Dencey began to be afraid. She 
cowered down in her chair by the open window. Out 
there by the harbor were the docks. Fiji men were 
at the docks working. They wouldn’t go to the 
Shearing. Stephen had told her long ago that Fijis 
were cannibals. That meant they ate folks instead 
of mutton, and they especially liked little girls with 
black hair. 

She knew Stephen had been pretending. But 
maybe he was only pretending to pretend. Maybe 
it was all so. Dencey thought she heard steps 
coming up the stair—up—up—up. They came to 
the door, paused, and went down again. It was only 
the wind. 


THE SHEARING 167 


In desperation she took up her sampler and began 
to stitch as hard as ever she could. But she wasn’t 
seeing the roses or the little willow trees she was 
stitching. She was seeing—all the while, seeing the 
Commons way out there by Miacomet Pond and 
folks arriving from all the roads there were. Care- 
free faces under the solemn Quaker bonnets, laugh- 
ing faces under the Quaker hats. And the Congre- 
gationalists too, for all Nantucket came to the 
Shearing Festival; and even people from the Cape 
and the Main. 

Oh, Mother didn’t know how much Dencey 
wanted to be there! Nobody could possibly know. 

Now all the sheep would be in the pen—every- 
body’s sheep from the whole Island. White as 
Meecy clouds, they crowded into the place. For 
yesterday they had all been washed in the pond. 
How fresh the wind blew out there, so far from 
everywhere. How the booming surf sounded all 
through the laughing, chattering voices, for the 
outer shore was just beyond the pond. So Dencey 
had heard it every year since before memory began. 
How blue, blue was the pond, how white the sheep, 
how intensely green the Commons. Dencey always 
saw things in color. 

By now the men would be coming with the 
shears. The poor sheep didn’t like it. Look how the 
sheep oil dripped from the long clipping scissors 
and even from the elbows of the shearers. Well, 


168 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


anyway, the sheep ought to be glad not to be 
smothered in that heavy greasy wool. How fast the 
men worked and marked up on the fence rail the 
number of sheep they had sheared. When the fence 
rail was full of marks, and all the naked sheep had 
scampered away on the grass, then everybody 
would have dinner. 

What was that ? 

Dionis was aware of a whistle. She was aware 
that it had been whistling again and again, only she 
hadn’t heard it. The Fijis were come! They were 
whistling to each other. The Fijis! Down there in 
the back yard! 

In a fascination of terror she crept to the window. 
She peeped down into the yard. What was it down 
there? Fijis were naked. The person down there had 
clothes on. The person down there wasn’t a man 
but a boy. Oh, it was Jetsam! 

“Hi, there,” he called, delighted. “Wus ye 
asleep? I thought ye wus dead.” 

A flourish of joy swept through Dencey, a fan- 
fare. Relief, safety, companionship, adventure! 
All suddenly out of the blue. 

“Well, can’t ye say nothin’?”’ 
sam. “Cat got yer tongue?” : 

“How did thee get here?” she called down 
rapturously. 

“On my two feet.” 

“But thee isn’t at the Shearing.” 


complained Jet- 


THE SHEARING 169 


“T don’t keer fur the ole Shearin’.” 

This was a lie and Dencey knew it. But what a 
glorious lie! Dencey hung recklessly out of the 
window. 

“They'll be eating dinner right now. Thee won’t 
get thine.” For even Jetsam got a royal dinner on 
Shearing Day. 

“T don’t keer. They was all thar. Yer ma an’ Peg 
Runnel an’ all. I counted ’em. So I knew ye wus 
here by yerself. Say, do they whup ye every day or 
only every other?” 

“They don’t whip me at all,” declared Dencey, 
offended. 

“Don’t? Honest Injun?”’ Jetsam was unbelieving. 

“Yes, Honest Injun Jill!” 

At this sally of wit they laughed uproariously. 

Jetsam came right under the window. 

“Say,” he called secretly, “come down.” 

Dencey’s heart thumped with amazement. Of 
course she couldn’t do that. 

“Nobody’s goin’ to see us. We kin go ’way out 
yander by the cliff. Nobody’s in the hull town.” 

“Tl can't?’ 

“Oh, yes, ye kin. Come along. Look what I got.” 

He held up a neat package in a beautiful napkin 
—sandwiches done up in the conventional manner. 

“We kin go anywhar ye want. I'll take ye down 
to the docks. Ye know they won’t be home till sun- 
down.” 


170 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Wonderful, wonderful. 

“Say, why don’t ye answer?’ 

She didn’t answer because she was thinking too 
hard. There was her own basket of lunch also. Why, 
they could have a feast. Almost as good as the 
Shearing. Better than the Shearing! 

“Wait,” she called. 

She did not stop for her bonnet. She picked up 
the basket and dashed down the stairway, then the 
lower stairway to the kitchen. 

There, in the great, empty, familiar kitchen, 
something arrested her. What was it? The room so 
neatly arranged in spite of this morning’s haste, 
the pans bright upon the mantelshelf, the fire 
carefully covered for the return, and the kettle on 
its crane. Her own dress and kerchief hung up, 
meticulously ironed by Mother in the hope that she 

would promise and be allowed to go. 
' _ If Dencey left this now, she would never see it 
again. She was sure of it. Her love of it was as 
instinctive as breathing, as strong as the muscles 
of her body. 

And, moreover, Jetsam’s lunch was stolen! 

Without a moment’s hesitation, she turned and 
ran upstairs again. She appeared.at the window. 

“What the deuce!’ called Jetsam. 

“T’m not going.” 

Jetsam swore a series of oaths all fastened 
together. 


THE SHEARING 171 


“Thee stop that,” called Dencey through her 
tears. “I can’t go, no matter what thee says.” 

“Would they whup ye so bad?” 

She nodded. 

Somehow that satisfied Jetsam. Whippings for 
himself were in the course of nature. But Dencey 
was a different matter. 

“Say,” he said, “I’ll give ye this hyar lunch. 
Tl put it on the kitchen steps fur ye.” 

“T couldn’t eat that,” declared Dencey, “be- 
cause thee stole it.” 

“T didn’t.” 

“Oh, yes, thee did, Sam Jetsam.” 

“Well, anyway, they'll not miss it. They had 
heaps an’ piles.”’ 

“Thee take it back and I’ll give thee half of 
mine. It’s got jelly cake.” 

The cake or some dawning repentance at last 
persuaded Jetsam. Then Dencey procured a rope 
from the boys’ room, took out half the lunch for 
herself and let down the other half in the basket to 
Jetsam. 

What fun! What infinite fun after the long tire- 
some do-nothing days! 

“Oh, Jetsam.” she called. “I'll give thee another 
sermon to read.” 

“T hain’t finished that un yet,” he answered. 
“Writin’s the very mischief.” 

“T’II find a plainer one. Thee wait.” 


172 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


She drew the basket up. 

In Dencey’s room a ladder led up to a trapdoor 
where was the garret. It was a small trapdoor, and 
Dencey could lift it. This she proceeded to do. Up 
in the garret she overturned a barrel of her uncle’s | 
sermons, searched hastily till she found a plainly 
written one. It concerned the death of George the 
Third and began with the terrific sentence, ‘George, 
George, George is no more!”’ 

She hurried down again, and lowered the sermon 
in the basket. Halfway down it fluttered out and 
Jetsam had to chase the leaves hither and yon. 
George was “no more” all over the yard. 

Suddenly, before he had secured a half of the 
pages, came the sound of old Mrs. Joy’s voice next 
door. 

“Sam Jetsam, how dares thee come in that yard! 
I'll tell Mrs. Coffyn, that I will.” 

And Jetsam flew with that swiftness known only 
to the bad boy. ; 


CHAPTER XXVII 


PURE MAGIC 


IONIS was alone again. No, not alone. Evi- 
dently Mrs. Joy had been detailed to watch 


her from next door. Dencey ate her lunch 
and still had the whole afternoon before her, blank 
and eventless. 
Suddenly she noticed the ladder and the open 
trapdoor. 
Then came the most wonderful event of the day. 
Dencey climbed up the ladder. To go downstairs 
seemed very wicked, but it was perfectly proper 
to go up. There, in the glimmering garret, were the 
dresses hanging in a row from the rafters, and on 
top of some, bonnets that looked as though they 
would nod. There were the coco shells scattered 
on the floor that the boys had got from a wreck. 
She had seen these hundreds of times. And there 
was the overturned barrel. For very baredom, she 
173 


174 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


began to search among the sermons, taking them 
out to the very bottom, all unaware of the wonder 
that lay just beyond her finger tips. 

Who can disbelieve in the ringing of fairy bells, 
mysterious trysts, “angels and ministers of grace,” 
when such things as this can happen: 

Dencey’s hand came upon something hard. She 
drew out a: little sheep-bound book like a hymn 
book. She opened it in the middle—a gobbling way 
she had—The Arabian Nights Entertainments! 

A little copper-plate picture of an enchanted 
horse and a princess with trousers on. That was all. 

She was aware of nothing more. 

The walls of the garret grew far and lordly, then 
melted in an incoming flood of Oriental sunshine. 
Jewels flashed, terrible blood-curdling murders 
were toward, people stepped on ordinary-looking 
carpets and were whisked at once into the air. A 
fairy lived in a well and came out to quarrel over 
who was the most beautiful prince in the world. 
Time was not, for pure joy is timeless. 

Then, blindingly, the world fell. 

“Dionis, what is thee doing? How dared thee 
leave thy room?” 

There was Mother standing halfway out of the 
trapdoor like a ghost out of a grave. 

“TI thought at least thee was honorable enough 
to stay in thy room. And why did thee throw papers 
all over the yard?” 


PURE MAGIC 175 


Still Dencey did not answer. It was not easy to 
come all the way from Bagdad to Nantucket. 

“Dionis, what is thee reading?”’ 

Dazedly, Dencey handed her the book. Mother 
looked at it with darkening brow. 

“Come down,” she said sternly. And Dencey 
followed her down the ladder. 

“Dionis, why does thee seem to find evil as 
though thee were its magnet? This is a book which 
belonged to Father. Grandfather told me to burn 
it. But I hid it at the bottom of a barrel. Oh, dear, 
I see how wrong I was!” 

“Mother,” cried out Dencey, aghast, “thee 
wouldn’t burn it.” 

“T certainly will. Grandfather says it is a worldly, 
wicked book.” 

“Tt isn’t. It isn’t. It’s the beautifullest book in 
the whole world. Thee sha’n’t do it.” 

Mother started toward the door. Dionis flashed 
after her and snatched the book from her hand. 
An unseemly struggle ensued. Lydia had all she 
could do to get the book back again. When she 
did get it, Dencey’s smouldering anger burst all 
bounds. She stamped her foot, gasping out strange 
words she didn’t know herself. 

“Thee is mean—mean and wicked. Thee is a 
wicked and slothful servant. Thee is—thee is 3 

Mother caught her shoulder. And the look on 
Mother’s face silenced all words. 


176 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Dionis, the book has evidently done its worst 
with thee. Oh, must I have Grandfather whip thee 
all over again?” 

Again Dionis sat waiting in her room. Oh, would 
she always be waiting there for something dreadful 
to happen! Now Grandfather would be coming up 
to whip her. She couldn’t stand it to be whipped 
now. It wasn’t like the first time. She was afraid. 
More afraid than she was of the Fijis. Grandfather’s 
legs weren’t good but his arm was terribly strong. 
He used to whip sailors on shipboard once, when he 
was mate. 

Oh, there was his step on the stair. Her heart 
thumped one awful thump and kept on thumping. 
The lower stair, the upper stair, he was coming so 
fast. 

The door opened. 

There appeared, not Grandfather, but Aunt 
Lovesta. Aunt Lovesta back from her far journey. 
Aunt Lovesta, smiling. With a cry, Dencey rushed 
to her, clasped arms about the strong waist, bury- 
ing her face against the soft warm kerchief, and 
getting it all wet with her tears. 

Then, somehow, she was sitting on a little stool 
with her head in Aunt Lovesta’s lap. Aunt Lovesta 
was stroking her hair and with every stroke com- 
fort was flowing over and over. She was telling ~ 
Aunt Lovesta everything. And Aunt Lovesta was 
telling her back, making everything clear. 


PURE MAGIC 177 


It appeared that some of the worst things weren’t 
wicked at all, and some other things were very 
wrong. It appeared that she could divide the prom- 
ise up. Not promise it all in one gulp. She could be 
kind to Jetsam when she saw him. She could give 
him food and clothes and books. She could bring 
him to see Aunt Lovesta. But she must not go out 
on the Commons to meet him. And she must prom- 
ise that and faithfully keep it. 

“But does thee like the boy so much, Dionis? 
Does thee like him as thee does Hopestill?”’ asked 
Aunt Lovesta. 

“Why, o’ course not,” said Dencey, open-eyed. 
*Hopestill’s my very most intimate friend.” 

“Thee is sure thee’d rather not be with the Jet- 
sam boy than with Hopestill or any other com- 
panions?”’ 

Dencey blushed indignantly. 

“Why, Aunt Lovesta, thee doesn’t suppose I’d 
be silly about a boy like Jane or Peggy!”’ 

And Aunt Lovesta smiled merrily. 


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CHAPTER XXVIII 
JETSAM IN THE LANE 


P \HERE followed a calm summer. Dionis was 
well content to be at home in the protected 
ways she had so strangely lost. Lydia began 

to think that the punishment seemingly so dis- 

astrous had been good after all. And Lovesta 
said: 

“Yea, Lydia, the Light lieth in her as a naked 
seed in stony ground, but it is there.” 

Dionis often saw Jetsam, saw him when on her 
errands or when he passed the house, which it must 
be acknowledged he often did. Dencey conducted 
him, after much persuasion, to Aunt Lovesta’s, 
where he stood like a bird you have caught and 
hold between your two hands, perfectly still, watch- 
ing with bright eyes. Aunt Lovesta could get noth- 
ing out of him. 

“Dencey, child,” she said afterward, “doubtless 

178 


JETSAM IN THE LANE 179 


thee sees something in the boy. But I’m afraid he is 
rather dull and ill-born.” 

“T don’t know about his being ill-born. But he 
isn’t dull, Aunt Lovesta. He learned to read as 
quick, as quick.” 


Far away on the Mainland the summer grew and 
sizzled. Nobody minded. Nobody dreamed of going 
away to avoid it. As for Nantucket, one beautiful 
day followed another—cool, breathful, fragrant— 
the gift of the sea. 

Hopestill and Dencey ran together as two 
. streams that had been parted by some temporary 
dam. Indeed, there were four girls who were in- 
separable. They were too old for dolls, but they had 
staid tea parties in each other’s yards. They went 
to the quiltings and were newly allowed to sit at 
the busy gossipy frame and sew the fine, fine 
stitches into an almost invisible pattern. Once, at a 
tea party in Dencey’s yard, Jetsam came and 
stood outside watching. Dencey could see his eyes 
peering between the palings of the fence. She was 
ashamed. Already Susan and Kate and Hopestill 
were pretending she had a beau. It was a great 
joke, for, of course, the Jetsam boy wasn’t a fit beau 
for anybody. Sedulously, Dencey turned her back 
on Jetsam. 

Sometime later, Dencey, with a crowd of young- 
sters, was careering up State Street toward the 


180 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Madeket Road. They all had pails and were bound © 
for blueberries. 
Jetsam appeared out of a lane, and one of the 
boys remarked: | 

“There’s Injun Jill’s boy—the one Dencey 
Coffyn got locked up for. Hey, Dence, why don’t 
thee go with him instead of us?” 

Dencey blushed crimson and tossed her head. 
Then, as they turned a corner, she glanced back. 

Yes, there he was, Jetsam. His eyes looked as if 
he had lost something. He was all alone, as usual— 
the one pariah. 

With a mighty effort, Dencey turned. 

“T’ll be right back,” she called, as she ran toward | 
him. 

“Sam Jetsam,” she said angrily. “What makes 
thee pop out of a lane and stare at me like that? 
Thee’s got to stop it.” 

For a wonder, Jetsam was not angry in return. 
He only said gloomily: 

“Yes, ye’re ashamed of me. Everybody’s 
ashamed of me, and you, too.” 

“No, I’m not. At least, I was a little bit when 
the boys taunted me.” 

Jetsam did look miserable. 

“But I won’t be any more,” said Dencey. 

“Tt isn’t won’t be,” he answered: “Ye jist are.” 

At that moment, who should turn into State 
Street but Liakim Cole, the Clerk of the Meeting— 


JETSAM IN THE LANE 181 


gaunt, dignified, absorbed in mighty matters, 
clicking his cane as he went along. In a community 
where none were supposed to be lordly the Clerk 
was lordliest of all. It was he took the sense of the 
meeting without vote and reported to the higher 
powers. 

Dencey moved close to Jetsam’s side, her shoul- 
der touching. 

“How does thee do, Friend Liakim,” she sang 
out. Right to the Clerk of the Meeting. Boldness 
could no farther go. 

The mighty one stopped—beetled his brow at the 
two standing there. It so happened that at that 
moment the old man had been mortal lonely. 

“How does thee do, child,” he answered. “‘ What 
a bright voice. Is thee and thy friend going berry- 
ing?” ; 

“Jetsam and me are friends,” shouted Dencey. 

“So I see,” said the old man, puzzled, and went 
on clicking his cane down the street. 

“There,” announced Dencey. “I stood with 
thee right before the Clerk. That shows I’m not 
ashamed.” 

Then, without waiting for answer, she dashed off 
to catch up with her crowd. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


SPARKS THAT FLY UPWARD 


YDIA COFFYN was having a veal feast. That 
meant that early in the morning Homer 
Cobb had come and killed the calf—a per- 

formance witnessed, I am sorry to say, by all the 

boys and even Jane. The meat had been cut up and 
was now ready for distribution. Grandfather Coffyn 
would have his share at home with the family to- 
morrow. Meanwhile, the portions must be carried 
to old Uncle Sylvanus Coffin and Cousin Scottow 

Coffin, etc., etc., for, in a veal feast, the relatives on 

the male side were served first. Then came Lydia’s 

three sisters and her brother Caleb just home from 

a voyage. Each portion had been placed on a large 

plate and covered with veal-feast napkins woven 

specially for the purpose. It was a: busy day. 
Dencey and Kanah had the joyous duty of carry- 
ing the plates to the relatives. It meant pleasant 
182 


SPARKS THAT FLY UPWARD 183 


welcomes, and compliments (paid to the veal, of 
course, as personal compliments were excess of 
vanity). And then sweet rounds stuffed into a 
child’s pocket as she went away. 

Now Dencey was starting out with the last plate, 
for Aunt Mehitable Severance, who lived at the 
other end of the town. 

Summer was gone. Autumn was come. From 
some hidden treasuries of the sky, wine rubies and 
fire were poured down upon the Commons. The dis- 
tances shouted with scarlet. The sea-girt solitude 
celebrated some mystic festival of its own beyond 
human power to enter. When Dionis had driven 
across the moorland with Aunt Lovesta, she as- 
tonished that relative by speaking not one word the 
whole way. But now that theophany was over and 
its place of divine showing gone gray, for it was 
late November. 

The day was one of those chance gifts of an 
austere season, warm and slumberous, with a haze 
over the sea. As Dencey glanced out over the har- 
bor, all the sloops and fishing boats seemed in a 
dream, ‘thinking delicate thoughts.” Strange that 
on such a beautiful morning all the boats should be 
huddling into the harbor instead of going on their 
widespread errands. 

Speaking of errands, Dencey must not loiter upon 
hers. So she hurried along with her plate toward 
State Street. Dencey had been “good”’ for a long 


184. DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


time. She had no wish to be otherwise now, as 
she stopped so innocently to read a poster tacked 
up on the Rotch Warehouse. 

What a poster it was! It bore a picture, a man 
balancing a staff upon his chin in a purely mirac- 
ulous manner, and on the top of the staff was a doll, 
or perhaps a living child. Dionis feasted upon this 
woodcut for a whole minute before reading the 
text. (Alas, well has the Good Book said, “Born 
to trouble as sparks that fly upward.”’) 


Profeffor Sylvanus Snubfhoe 
On Tuefday Eve. Nov 28, 1822 
Will difplay the Nefico’s Box 
Rope-dancing, wire-walking and 100 deceptions 
To wh. will be added 
An Imitation of a Bagpiper and A Britifh Officer. 
The whole to conclude with the surprifing powers of the 
Ventriloquift 
He poffeffes by nature the power of caufing a voice to 
be heard in all parts of the room and Clofits 
He caufes the voice of a child to be heard in a 
Tea Pot! 
and exclaim ‘‘Let me out, Let me out, or I shall fmother!” 
The fame voice will be heard in any 
Gentleman’s fnuff-box or Ladie’s Thimble. 
Mr Snubfhoe will throw his voice into a Cod Fifh which 
will immediately make a noife like that of a Hog. 

He will caufe an Oyfter to imitate a number of Birds 
‘Lo give a minute detail of thif exhibition would fill volumes 
Admission so¢. Children a shilling 
Doors open at 6 o’clock._ 

Performance at 7 ~ 


Washington Hall 


SPARKS THAT FLY UPWARD 185 


Dionis read it to its glowing end. She probably 
did not breathe while reading it, for, at the final 
word, “Children a shilling,” her breath came back 
in a long shuddering gasp. Then the Wish sprang 
into being. | 

If that Wish could have been seen, how it would 
have towered above her—a bright shape “ pulling 
her backward by the hair.” 

Oh, if she could attend that performance. 
“Doors open at six o’clock.” These wonders actu- 
ally on Nantucket Island—not in some far-off port 
of Peru or the Antarctic, but here at home, to be 
touched and handled by the commoner, beheld by 
the public eye. 

And she had a shilling. Uncle Caleb had given her 
a shilling when he came home. She had supposed she 
would keep it until she was grown up. But what was 
the use of growing up if thee missed a marvel like 
this—a chance never to be repeated in a lifetime. 

The manner of going did not occur to her, the 
sin of it was afar off. There was only the Wish. 

Suddenly a voice at her elbow. 

“What ye doin’ hyar—starin’ with yer mouth 
wide open?” 

It was Jetsam. He had a way of appearing from 
nowhere like that. 

Dencey shut her mouth and swallowed. 

“Oh, I wish I could see that,” she said. “I wish 
——”’ Her voice trailed off for very intensity. 


186 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“See what?” he asked. 

“Why, what the poster says. He can make a 
codfish grunt like a hog. And an oyster talk—no, 
sing. ‘Sing like a number of birds.’” She corrob- 
orated it in actual reading. 

“Aw, he can’t. An oyster—whew!”’ 

“Yes, he can. Look at the reading and the 
pictures.” 

Jetsam began to read the poster. Many words 
were troublesome, as “Professor” and “Nesico.”’ 
Dencey grew impatient. She began to read it to 
him in clear inspired tones. Jetsam took fire at 
them. 

“Lordy!” he exclaimed. “By Crick, makes his 
voice come out of a closet, does he?” 

“And out of a teapot,” emphasized Dencey. 

“I’m goin’,” announced Jetsam, without finish- 
ing the poster. “I’m goin’ to-night.” 

“To-night,” repeated Dencey faintly. Brought 
down thus to reality, it gave her a shock. 

“T’m afraid it’s wicked,” she ventured. “‘Thee— 
thee ought not to go.” 

“Ye’d go if ye dast, but ye don’t dass.” 

Dencey, the honest, knew this to be so. 

“Hit’s no more wicked to hold a cane on yer chin 
than in yer hand. Hit’s jist tricks.” 

“T couldn’t go to Washington Hall,” said Den- 
cey. h 

“Yes, ye could. I’d wait fer ye at the door and 


SPARKS THAT FLY UPWARD 187 


slip ye in so nobody ud see ye. It’ll be after 
dark.” 

“ After dark!” 

“Yes, silly. That don’t hurt. Put on somebody’s 
oiler an’ sou’wester an’ nobody’ll know ye.” 

Dencey’s eyes sparkled. Disguise, night, flight, 
and the wonders of magic! 

*‘T’ll come,” she said. “Thee be sure to be there 
—at the door.” 

“Of course I will.’ Sam put his arms akimbo. 
An’ I won’t let no dirty rascal hurt ye neither,” 


he said. 


CHAPTER XXX 


THE HORRIBLE PROFESSOR SNUBSHOE 


UDDENLY both of them felt a presence. Sam 
S saw it first and flashed around the corner like 
a swallow. Dencey faced around. It was none 
other than Aunt Susanna Severance, a relative 
more feared than loved by the youngsters. She be- 
longed to what Peggy Runnel called the “Squelchin’ 
Committee” and that office seemed never absent 
from her thoughts. 

“Why, Dencey Coffyn,” she commented. “I do 
wonder at thee, loitering when thee has a veal plate 
to carry. Doesn’t thee suppose somebody’s waiting 
for it? What was thee doing?” 

Then her eye fell on the poster. 

“Dionis Coffyn, I’m not surprised thee is a sub- 
ject of uneasiness to thy mother. Reading about a 
stage play. Of all things!” 

She leaned forward, pushing back her bonnet and 
pouncing on the poster. Dencey couldn’t help 

188 


THE HORRIBLE PROFESSOR 189 


noticing that, even for Aunt Susanna, it had in- 
terest. She read it through to the end. 

“Horrible! Horrible!” she pronounced. “Right 
here on the Island in Washington Hall. I don’t see 
how they dare.” 

Dionis longed to run but was too polite. 

“T shall ask Liakim Cole if it can’t be torn down. 
A stage play in Nantucket!” 

Just at this moment a diversion was created. 
There came out of the “Captain’s Room” of the 
Warehouse a man—such a man! His hair was long- 
ish and oily so it stained the shoulders of his coat. 
His moustache was elaborate. He was big and 
burly, yet suave—too suave. He was a Yankee, 
which made it all the worse. 

The nice fresh-flowered soul of the little girl re- 
coiled from him, strangely knowing the evil in him. 

“Admirin’ my poster, air ye,” he said boldly to 
Aunt Susanna. “ Well, it’s a good un, ef I do say it- 
And the best on’t ’tis—it’s true. I kin do it all. 
Every darn bit of it, jest as it’s writ down.” 

He could do it! Dencey’s magic heaven came 
clattering about her ears. Was he, then, the magi- 
cian—this common, horrible man? 

But he was rattling on very fast. 

“The fust time ye see my show, ma’am, wun’t be 
the last. Ye’ll come agin and 4 

“JT!” interrupted Aunt Susanna’s deep organ 
voice. “I see thy stage play? Never! I value my im- 


190 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


mortal soul too dear. I am reading thy notice that 
I may report it to the Committee on Sufferings and 
have it torn down. I’ll gladly tear it down with my 
own hand.” 

The man laughed rudely. 

“Shocks ye, does it?” 

Imagine this to Aunt Susanna—Clerk of the 
Woman’s Meeting—“ Well, good enough. I’m glad 
to shock ye kill-joy Quakers: ennaway. Ef suthin’ 
cud jist shock ye enough to make ye give yer dead 
some gravestuns instid o’ shovin’ ’em in the ground 
like they was cats an’ dogs, an’ git yer young folks 
married decent with a preacher ss 

All this, and the lightning did not strike him nor 
the sky fall upon him! 

However, Aunt Susanna did. 

“How dares thee!” she cried. ‘ How dares thee 
blaspheme God’s elect and the ways taught by the 
Seed of Truth! Thy notice shall surely come down 
and thy wicked performings be forbidden in the 
Island.” 

“Ye won’t, nuther, ye—ye—ye ” The man 
stepped threateningly toward Aunt Susanna, swear- 
ing some oath. 

Just then the spell of horror which had held 
Dencey broke, and she fled. 

Up State Street! on and on, carrying her plate 
of veal carefully anid a surrounding tumult of 
thoughts. Friends—Quaker Friends to be evilly 


THE HORRIBLE PROFESSOR I9I 


spoken of, their sacred ways questioned, and that 
by an Off-Islander! Why, he wasn’t even born on 
Nantucket, much less belonged to one of the “fami- 
lies.” That horrid, horrid man! 

Gradually other thoughts came back. 

She had been going to that stage play—planned 
it with Jetsam. The fiery pit had yawned. Only 
Aunt Susanna had snatched her back—a brand 
from the burning. But Jetsam—he would go. He 
would wait there for her at the door of that dread 
place. 

She almost dropped her plate, saved it by a 
miracle, and hurried up to Aunt Mitty’s door. 

Aunt Mitty was puzzled by her. 

“Can’t thee tell me any news to-day? Why is thee 
in such a hurry? Here’s a cup full of pickled limes 
for thee. Thee can eat two on the way home, but 
the rest is for Mother. Thee must bring back the 
cup. Dencey—does thee hear af 

But Dencey was already down the path again. 
There, in the road, a blessed assurance came to her. 
Aunt Susanna said the show must be broken up. 
And what Aunt Susanna said was surely performed. 
Perhaps, by this time, the man was even aboard a 
vessel sailing out of the harbor—he and all his 
wicked magic. Then Jetsam would be safe. 

The magnificent wish to go to the show had died 
at one blow at the appearance of the showman— 
the cruel, snake-like, commonplace showman. 


192 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


She wouldn’t want to see anything that man could 
do. The very thought of him gave her “the creeps.” 

Aunt Susanna was terrible as an accuser but 
now, as a deliverer, she was a tower of strength. 
Yet, even so, Dencey looked up and down the street 
hoping to see Jetsam and warn him. Passing the 
Rotch Warehouse she gave one fearful glance. Ah, 
the poster was gone. Susanna Victrix! 

Dencey went home comforted. All that day a 
calm of deliverance was upon her. 

Next day, toward noon, Mother sent her out to 
put Nelly-cow in the shed because the wind had 
gone around north. As Dencey shut the shed door, 
she heard a familiar whistle, and there was Jetsam, 
very indignant. 

“Why didn’t ye come, ye ’fraid-cat. I waited fer 
ye till half-past seven.”’ 

“Waited? Where?” A wild startle shook Den- 
cey’s mind. 

“Why, at Washington Hall, goosey. But the 
show wasn’t thar. It was moved to Waco’s Sail 
Loft, next to Dicky Dicks’s pub. I was goin’ to take 
ye. 

“But, Jetsam,” queried Dencey’s scared voice, 
“there wasn’t any show. Aunt Susanna " 

“Aunt Susanna nothin’! O’ course she kicked at 
it. But he only moved it down to the dock streets. 
An’, oh, Crick, it was grand. He made the babby 
yell out o’ the teapot like the paper said. I wus so 


THE HORRIBLE PROFESSOR 193 


sorry fer it, I was pushin’ through the crowd to git 
it out my own self when, all of a twink, hit was in 
the back o’ the room. Yellin’—‘I’m out. I’m out.’ 
An’ ye couldn’t see it—not a thing.” 

Dencey opened the back gate and came out. 
She wanted to be nearer Jetsam. 

“Oh, Jetsam, did thee go to that wicked show?” 

“O’ course I went to it.” Jetsam was nonplussed. 
“Didn’t ye tell me about it? Didn’t ye plan to go, 
too?” 

“Yes—yes—I did.” Dionis kept clasping and 
unclasping her hands. 

Jetsam regarded her with scorn. 

“Sissy! I didn’t think ye’d be so afeard of yer 
Aunt Susanna.” 

“Tt wasn’t her. It was that man—the showman. 
He was so horrid and oily and he said swears.” 

“But he didn’t swear in the show,’ persisted 
Jetsam. 

“Oh, it wasn’t the swears. It was him,” declared 
Dencey. She was puzzled trying to express what she 
knew so certainly. “He—he was bad. He was so 
hairy. Oh, Jetsam, how could thee watch him doing 
anything? I’d as leave watch a snake or—or an 
octopus.” 

“He wasn’t wicked, I tell ye. He was funny. He 
made me laugh till I got a stitch in my side. He 
made everybody laugh.” 

“Oh, Jetsam, don’t think it was funny. Think of 


ae DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


thy soul. People that go to vain shows and pastimes, 
they go—to—hell.” 

She paused before the sepulchral word. 

Jetsam jeered angrily. Truth to tell, he was dis- 
appointed. He had expected to boast about the 
show. And here Dencey was talking about his soul! 
He had something else to tell, too. 

“T’m goin’ with him!” he announced. 

She merely stared in speechless unbelief. “Yes, 
I’m goin’ with him—off-island—to the Continent. 
Mebbe to Boston. I’m goin’ to help him with the 
show. He’s hired me—for wages!” 

Sam stood with legs apart to watch the effect. 
It was all that could be desired. Dencey seized his 
shoulders and shook him. 

“Thee isn’t, thee isn’t, Sam Jetsam. Thee 
wouldn’t go with that man. Oh, Sam, isn’t thee 
just teasing?”’ 

Indeed, he was teasing, and enjoying it hugely. 
Dencey had neglected him of late. Now, here she 
was shaking his shoulders, pleading with him. 
Why, she was crying. He laughed straight out. 
Besides, it was true—this news. The man had said 
he would take Jetsam. Only the wage part was a lie. 

“Hi, ye’re mad,” Jetsam said. “Ye wanted to go 
just onct, and I’m goin’ every night, yes—’ceptin’ 
when we’re on shipboard or lookin’ at Boston.” 

Dencey became more quiet as the awful truth 
became plain. 


THE HORRIBLE PROFESSOR 195 


“Sam, I’ll give thee that other book, I’Il find it 
again in the attic. It’s ten times nicer than Pilgrim. 
It’s about geniis and princes and fairies. I’ll give 
thee my fan coral, I'll give thee ee 

But at all of these Sam shook and reshook his 
head. 

“T’m goin’,” he said. “To-morrow mornin’ on 
the packet. The man hired me.” 

All of a sudden, he wrenched himself free from 
her grasp and fled. 

Dencey stood there, her teeth chattering in the 
cold wind. Her mind racing with witch thoughts 
and terrors. 

“Dencey, Dencey!”” Her mother’s voice at last 
penetrated her mind. “I’ve been calling thee for 
ten minutes and thee right there. Take the pail 
and go to the street pump for me.” 


CHAPTER XXXI 


DENCEY MAKES UP HER MIND 


[) aaa gave her mother the dripping pail 


and then climbed upstairs to her own room. 
The calamity was so great that it stilled her 
mind like a smoothed-out sea before a storm. 

Jetsam was lost—utterly lost. All the horrors of 
hell, its fleshly burning and inward soul agony 
which her grandfather had so aptly described, 
came back to her. It was to this that Jetsam was 
descending. And Pilgrim’s Progress told all about it. 
And Jetsam would be there forever and forever, 
he and that terrible man. 

Mother called her to wash the raisins for plum 
broth. The veal feast made a busy day of cooking. 
Dencey went obediently downstairs and sat hour 
long at the task, thinking, thinking. 

She had done this deed. She alone: If she had not 
stopped in front of the notice and asked Jetsam to 
read it, he would never have known about the show. 

196 


DENCEY MAKES UP HER MIND 197 


Oh, dear, oh, dear, and she had begged him to go, 
she had planned to go with him. It was all her doing. 
His sin was on her soul. 

And now Jetsam was going away with the show- 
man. The showman would be cruel to him. And 
Jetsam was going to hell forever and forever. 

“Dence Coffyn,” said Peggy, shaking her, “can’t 
thee answer a civil question? Thee can usually talk 
mor’n enough. And thee’s washed twice too many 
raisins. Why, of all things!” 

Then Dencey went upstairs again. 

Only gradually did the dread thoughts retire 
enough to let a plan of action come in. 

If she could find Jetsam, and tie him to a post 
or something. Where could she find a rope? Where 
could she find Jetsam? Down there among the 
docks and the ships and the sailors. Oh, she didn’t 
know where he was! And to-morrow morning he 
would go. 

She stole down to, her grandfather’s room to look 
at the tide table. Yes, tide would be high at 3 a. M. 
The packet would weigh anchor then to catch the 
flood tide. Three a. M. The dead of night. And that 
man with him. That wicked man! 

Young as she was, Dencey actually wrung her 
hands. But she was silent—silent. The purposes 
forming in her brain kept her so. Purpose after 
purpose made and rejected. 

The rope was foolish, of course. Could she give 


198 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


him anything? No, she had offered him every treas- 
ure. But, if she could find him, she could keep him 
back. She would clutch him with both hands and 
drag him up the street to Mother. Mother wouldn’t 
let him go to hell. 

She crept downstairs to find Mother. It was in 
her heart to tell Mother everything. But Lydia was 
not there. Little Ariel was sick and she had taken 
him to the doctor. 

Dencey looked out the window. The pale Novem- 
ber sunshine had given place to gray cloud. A snow 
fell half-heartedly and swirled like white dust along 
the streets. There was no time to lose. She must go 
quickly now, before dark. She must save Jetsam. 

She went to her mother’s room. Found some pa- 
per on which she wrote a note, which she pinned 
on Mother’s pincushion, then down to the back 
hall, where she put on her pleater and warmest 
cloak. 

Then out at the front door. 

Whew, how the wind caught her! And the snow 
pricked her cheeks like little pins. 

She stood, clutching her cloak, wondering where 
to go. Then, suddenly, she recalled Dicky Dicks’s 
boarding house down by the water’s edge. Jetsam 
had often spoken of it. For Dicky. sometimes let 
him sleep in the taproom on stormy nights. The 
place was the peculiar care of the sheriff for its 
midnight fights and worse. But Dencey did not 


DENCEY MAKES UP HER MIND 199 


know that. She started at once. It was just the sort 
of weather for Jetsam to be there. 

The pleasant home streets were left behind. She 
was threading her way in the twisted lanes crowded 
with water life. Here bales and hogsheads, there 
anchors tumbled in front of ship-hardware shops, 
and everywhere drays unloading at the doors— 
the men blocking the path with their burdens. 

Oh, the forbidden streets again. A wicked sin to 
come here! But Dencey brushed the thought aside 
as one would brush away a fly. Jetsam’s danger 
overwhelmed all else. 

The first man she asked the way was a Portu- 
guese who stared and grinned at her, not under- 
standing a word of English. The next was a true 
Yankee. 

“Ye hain’t no business at that pub, miss,” he 
said. 

“Tt isn’t business,” said Dionis breathlessly, 
blinking her eyelashes with snow. “He’s—he’s 
there, and I’ve got to find him and take him home.” 

“Gol darn the ole drunk,” commented the 
Yankee. He pointed her the way to the boarding 
house. “‘ Now, ef yer pap ain’t thar, ye come right 
out,” he advised. “He hain’t no right to bring ye 
thar.” 

Dionis stood fearfully by the closed door of Dicky 
Dicks’s. There is no telling when she would have 
found courage to enter; but a noisy crew of sailors 


200 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


suddenly bore down upon the place, and Dencey 
was hurried in, in their wake. 

A dreadful-looking man was Dicks, the barkeep. 
At first, Dionis could not bring herself to speak to 
him. A gash ran up one cheek ending in his eye— 
ending the eye, in fact, for there was none there. 
The thing stabbed Dencey with actual pain. And 
the man himself, jolly as a cricket, running hither 
and yon to serve the sailors with grog. 

But at last Dionis got his attention. 

“Jetsam? Injun Jill’s Jetsam? Ye want him?” he 
asked. “Air ye the little gal he talks about ?”’ 

“Ts he here?” she insisted. “Oh, I must see him 
quick.” 

“Well, no, he hain’t. I’m sorry. He was here the 
forepart o’ the afternoon helping the showman he’s 
a-goin’ with. Had to work, I tell ye. But now he’s 
went out to the cabin to split some last kindlin’ fer 
Injun Jill.” 

“Oh,” pleaded Dionis, “if he comes back here, 
don’t let him go with that man—please.” 

“Well, now,” said Dick, plunging a red-hot poker 
into a jug of ale, “I wisht I could keep ’im back. 
But ye can’t do nuthin’ with Jetsam. That man 
Snubshoe was jailed in New Bedford fer some bad 
doin’s 0’ his. Jetsam’s a fool to go with him, ef ye 
ask me.” . 

But Dionis wasn’t “asking” him. Hadn’t she 
known all that from the beginning? 


DENCEY MAKES UP HER MIND 201 


“Don’t let Jetsam go with him,” she said again. 
Then she ran out the door. 


The little street was already attired in white— 
all suddenly clean and silent. The roofs seemed to 
cosey down beneath the snow as if some kindliness 
were touching them. The gables, set this way and 
that, shouldering forward on the crooked lane, 
nodded solemnly to each other. 

“Dencey’s going out to the Commons again,” 
they seemed to be telling. “She’s going out to meet 
Jetsam on the Commons, and she promised she 
wouldn’t.”’ 

A sob suddenly caught Dencey’s throat. 

“Oh, Aunt Lovesta,” she said aloud. “I’m sorry 
I broke my promise to thee.” 

She spoke as though it were already done, so cer- 
tain was she of doing it. All up the street the word 
followed her mind. ‘‘My promise—my promise.”’ 
All up the street and to the Mill Road. 

“T didn’t mean to do it, Auntie,” she said again. 

The mills on the hill were astonished and lifted 
up their snowy arms against her. Not one mill sail 
was moving. They were all stripped and locked 
against the storm. 

In the town the snow had come down dreamily 
but out here on the Commons it was hurried by the 
wind, driven in clouds and gusts. It wasn’t like 
snow but like a fine white mist. Everywhere the 


202 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


wind moaned. It seemed to be talking in her ears. 
She could hear the sea crashing against the distant 
beaches. 

Out here on the Island was a big white world. 

Dionis looked back. Already the town was hid- 
den, and even the mills looked dim in the curtains 
of snow. 

“Tt’s a good thing I came out here so often,” 
thought Dencey, “or I might lose my path.” 


CHAPTER XXXII 


DENCEY UNDER CONCERN 


AMMIE Jetsam, lingering about the docks 
S near eight e’clock of the evening for a last 
good-bye to friends, suddenly heard the South 
Church bell ring out wild and clanging. A fire! All 
Nantucket was in mortal fear of a fire. Even before 
the “‘great fire” of ’46, this fire fear on the Island 
was intense. In this gale there’d be no downing it. 
Sam’s growing homesickness changed to de- 
lighted excitement. He jammed down his cap and 
ran up the street. 

“Whar’s the fire?” he demanded, 

“T dunno,” said the old sailmaker. “ Must be out 
a ways. Folks is huntin’ for it.” 

Jetsam ran onward. Up on State Street he caught 
at a hurrying man. “ Whar’s the fire?” he queried, 
amid the bell’s lound clangour. 

‘?Tisn’t a fire, sonny. It’s that little girl of Lydia 
Coffyn’s. She’s lost.” 


203 


204. DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Lost! How—lost?” Something went wrong in 
Jetsam’s chest. His throat shut tight. 

“Dunno,” said the citizen anxiously. “They’re 
afraid she’s drowned off the dock.” 

“She hain’t.”” Jetsam heard somebody that 
might be himself asserting this. “She hain’t no 
baby to go tumblin’ off the dock.” 

“Hain’t? How do ye know?” 

“She hain’t drowned, I tell ye.’ Sam seemed 
hitting out against some horror which could not be. 

“Well, if ye know so much, go tell her mother.” 

Now the town crier came up the street ringing 
his bell. 

“Child lost!” =Cling—clang—cling—clang. 
“Child lost, Lydia Coffyn’s Dionis. Had on a 
cloak an’ a hood.” Cling—clang. “Dionis Coffyn. 
Lost, lost.”’ 

Every stroke of his bell seemed to hit Sam in the 
same place in his chest that had gone wrong in the 
first place. The crying of Dencey’s name like that on 
State Street was a curious offense. He wanted to 
choke Jake, the crier, and make him stop. 

Without definite object, Jetsam began running 
toward North Water Street—toward the place he 
had last seen her. She must be there. She couldn’t 
disappear. Anything as real and touchable as 
Dencey. 

The Coffyn house loomed large and solid in the 
flying snow. All the lower windows shone with 


DENCEY UNDER CONCERN 205 


lights. Jetsam entered the yard and knocked 
timidly at the kitchen door. No one answered. He 
pushed the door open and peered in. 

Peggy Runnel stood at the sink wringing out her 
dishcloth, wringing and wringing it and gazing at 
the window where already each little black pane 
was outlined in white clinging snow. 

“So dark—so dark!” she moaned. “An’ that 
child out in it. Oh—oh!” 

She tossed down the dishcloth, went over to the 
fireplace, then back to the sink again. Sam was by 
this time in the middle of the room. 

““Whar’s she gone?” he demanded. ‘‘ Whar’s she 
gone, durn ye?” 

Peggy Runnel stopped, aghast. 

“Thee! Sam Jetsam! Thee! How dast thee show 
thy face here! The boldness o’ it!” 

“Tell me whar she is.” 

“And if we knew, wouldn’t we go get her, Sam 
Jetsam? Is thee simple? Get out, I say. Lydia— 
Lydia,” she lifted her voice and ran to the keeping- 
room door. “Hyar’s that Sam Jetsam come to ax 
about Dencey. Of all things!” 

Into the room came Lydia. Her face was white 
as chalk, and out of it her gray eyes shone like a 
wounded deer’s. No one could have guessed that 
the low steady voice was controlling a fiery anger. 
She was frightened at her hatred of this mere boy. 

“Please go away,” she said. “‘ We are very busy.” 


206 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“T don’t want nothin’. I jist want to know whar’s 
Dencey. She hain’t drowned,” he asserted. “She 
hain’t, I tell ye.” 

For answer, Lydia hurried to the kitchen door 
and opened it. A blast blew snow along the floor and 
flared up the fire under the pot. 

“T cannot see thee now,” she repeated, in her 
cold, even voice. “We are in great sorrow and thee 
is the cause.” 

Sam made no move toward the significant door. 

“Me?” he shouted. “ How’d I lose her?”’ 

Suddenly the keeping-room door was thrown 
open again by Hedassah Gardner, full dressed in 
shaggy coat and muffler, and with a lighted tin 
lantern. 

“We’re all ready, Lydia,” he said. “A posse of 
men is searching the docks. Maggie Hall says she 
saw her about five o’clock going down that way, 
and a man saw her, too. But Ben and I are going 
out to the Commons. We'll find her—somewhere. 
Don’t thee worry.” 

“T’m going with thee,” she answered. 

“Thee’d better not, Lydia. Thee might even de- 
lay us.” They all hurried into the keeping room, for- 
getting Jetsam entirely. 

Peggy rushed to the door to close out the blast. 
“Why doesn’t thee go?” she demanded. 

“What Mis’ Coffyn mean sayin’. I lost her?”’ in 
sisted Sam. 


DENCEY UNDER CONCERN 207 


“°Cause thee did. The darling left a note pinned 
on her mother’s pincushion and sayin’, “I’m under 
concern for Sammie Jetsam and have gone to find 
him!’ Thee’s always been enticin’ her away, Sam 
Jetsam. An’ now I reckon thee’s killed her. Get out 
with thee!” 

The door closed with a slam, leaving Sam in the 
whistling blackness and the snow. 

“Tm under concern for Sammie Jetsam and have 
gone out to find him. I’m under concern for Sammie 
Jetsam.” Over and over the words whirled in his 
brain like the whirling snow. So that’s what she 
had done. “Under concern?’ Yes, about what he 
had said this morning. That he was going with the 
showman. There was no harm in the showman. 
What a goose! How foolish girls were, anyway. 
Just because he teased her. Gone out to find him, 
had she, in this gale and snow. The fool! He was 
very angry with Dencey. 

He stumbled out to the street. Two men came out 
the front door, bending double as they met the 
wind. 

“T certainly hope the child hasn’t gone to the 
Commons,” said one. “The wind’s gone around 
north. She might freeze; and with snow covering 
the roads, well, I don’t see how on earth we’re going 
to trace her. Of course, I didn’t say that to Lydia.” 

“Thee didn’t need to. She knows!” They hurried 
out of sight. 


208 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Jetsam ran ahead, passed them, and ran on to- 
ward Mill Hill and the Commons. Of course she’d 
gone there. That’s where she always went to find 
him. He still thought he was angry. 

“The goose,” he kept saying, “the durned 
goose.” But like a drowning refrain the words al- 
ways came back. “I’m under concern for Sammie 
Jetsam. I’m under concern—I’m under ” 

Sam understood the phrase. It was Quaker, and 
all Nantucket understood it. There was no stronger 
expression for earnest care and wish to help. 

Under concern for Sammie Jetsam, yes, she’d 
been under that concern ever since she first came 
out on the Commons to find him. “She might ’a’ 
know’d she’d git lost in this tarnal cold an’ give all 
this trouble,” he said. No, not even was she at 
fault there. It had been warmer this afternoon and 
had turned cold suddenly. It wasn’t her fault. He 
couldn’t fault her, try though he might. She’d just 
gone out to find him, like she always did. Wonder 
what she brought him thts time. Suddenly, that giving 
of Dencey’s, that continual giving, smote the boy 
horribly. She shouldn’t give him nothin’ more. Not 
a durn thing. He wouldn’t take it from her. 

When he passed Mill Hill into the open, the gale 
struck him and knocked him forward to his knees. 

He scrambled up. Dencey was out in this. This 
gale, this snow, this blackness. Lordy! It would 
kill her, and she’d gone out for him—for him. 


DENCEY UNDER CONCERN 209 


“Lord A’mighty,” he couldn’t find her this way. 
He was the fool, not she, to go out without a lan- 
tern. He must get a lantern—quick. He turned 
back facing the gale and, with the eerie sense of the 
very poor, found his way in the blackness down a 
little street and burst into a small hut. 

“Gimme a lantern, Beppo,’ he shouted to the 
Portuguese, who sat crouched by the fire. 

The family sprang up. 

“What ye want, Sammé? Lantern? No go cabin 
to-night—stay here.” 

They were arguing with him. They laid hands 
upon him. Would they never understand? 

“Gimme the lantern, I say. Give it me. Some- 
body’s lost, I tell ye.”” He broke away from them, 
searching the house wildly himself. 

“Maybe Meester Brown he go. He knows roads,” 
they argued. 

“T know the roads. Nobody knows ’em like me. 
She went out for me and it’s me must find her. 
Oh——” 

He had discovered the lantern himself. He opened 
it, saw the good long sperm candle, lighted it with a 
brand. Durn his fingers, what made them tremble 
sot 

Then he slammed the door of the hut and was 
out in the night again. Very soon he met the full 
gale once more ‘beyond Mill Hill on the open Com- 
mons. He pushed on in the buffeting darkness. His 


210 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


tin pierced lantern threw sprays of sparkles ahead 
of him on the snow. The road was already full of 
drifts—piled up against a straggling fence that ran 
along. Now the fence stopped. The road seemed to 
stop, too, only snow, snow, snow. Yes, Jetsam knew 
the roads, but he wished he could see Farmer 
Brown’s light. He peered anxiously and made on- 
ward, blown fiercely forward by the wind. He knew 

the danger of the going. . 


RY hala ie | 


ee pant 
nn yo ! \\y » 

YD SNC ey, Xn » \ = 
Ye We Ss SSN 
CHAPTER XXXIII 


IN THE STORM 


G ies a strange thought crossed Jetsam. He 


had bargained with that girl Dencey for the 

book, the teaching, the food. He had all his 
life bargained for everything. But she would have 
given him all those things and taken nothing. 
Bargaining meant nothing to her. She’d give any- 
way. Why? Durn it, he didn’t know. He reckoned 
she was a fool. Give and git nothin’. And now she’d 
given the last thing. Maybe she was dead—for him, 
for him! 

Lordy, how his throat hurt! 

He stopped and swung his lantern wrathfully. 

Couldn’t he stop that fool thinking? He’d miss 
the road himself, if he didn’t watch out. 

Then a blessing. Quite suddenly he saw, far off 
in a waste of snow, the mist-sprayed gleam of 
Farmer Brown’s light. He took his bearings by it. 
The road turned here. Yes, his lantern caught the 
stunted tree he knew. He knew the road. He could 
follow somehow. But Dencey—of course she 

211 


212 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


couldn’t find it. Give and git nothin’. Give and git 
nothin’. Whar was she? Half buried in a drift, most 
like. 

The snow was up to his calves now. He had to 
push through it like a plow. All the way he watched 
for signs of Dencey. But he saw no signs. The snow 
covered everything. Of course, she would try to get 
to Jill’s cabin. He would find her there. 

If he was crying, he was spared the shame of it, 
for the snow was so thick on his eyelashes and wet 
on his face that even he could not have told. 

He passed the second farmhouse far to the left— 
a glimmering beacon. Oh, if he could go faster. 
Never, never had the way been so long. 

At last Jill’s hut. It was Jetsam’s first instinct to 
hide from Jill. She might stop him. He stole up 
noiselessly and peeped into the flake-laden window. 
There Jill sat before a fresh fire—crouched on the 
floor. No one else was in the cabin. Suddenly, Jill 
looked around with that strange sixth sense she had. 

“Daggon’t—she could allus tell if anybody was 
near. She was an Injun, sure enough.” 

He stole back, hiding behind the wood-shed. All 
was still. He did not want to look into the shed. 
That was the last chance of finding Dencey. It 
took all his courage to make the test. 

He looked. 

Dencey was not there! 

The ache in Jetsam’s throat suddenly became a 


IN THE STORM 273 


wild terror. She was gone—gone—gone. He had 
searched carefully all along the way, he had come 
to the goal. Beyond this was doubt. Miles of doubt. 
She might be anywhere on the Island. Behind him, 
before him. Buried in the snow. Dead! 

(“I am under concern for Sammie Jetsam.”’) 

“She done it for me,”’—Jetsam’s half-frozen lips 
formed the words. 

There is no heart-tug in the world so strong as 
this thought. Whole religions have been founded 
upon it and lasted alive through a thousand years. 
The thought swept the poor waif of a boy stronger 
than the gale and the storm. It swept the ignorance 
out of his mind and the fear out of his will. 

He ran out of the wood-shed holding his arms 
high in front of him. 

“Say, leoky here,” he shouted. “I got to find 
her. She’ll die ef I don’t. Ye see that, don’t ye? I’ve 
gotta find her guick, too. Do ye hear?” 

Who was to hear, Jetsam didn’t know. It wasn’t 
a prayer, it was a threat. It hadn’t even the bar- 
gaining of Jacob, but it had strength. His mind 
went suddenly clear and unafraid. He walked to- 
ward the road swinging his lantern to throw its light 
as far as might be. Then he turned back again, 
past the house, and down toward the hollow where 
he chopped wood. He kept the lantern close to the 
ground. Abruptly the sparkles showed something— 
a black lump. He pulled it out of the snow. 


214 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


It was Dencey’s school bag. Hope shouted all 
through him. He crouched low over the lantern. 
Yes, footprints, footprints almost covered. Jetsam 
began to tremble so he could hardly hold the lan- 
tern. He knelt in the snow—bringing his face close. 
Yes, they were little foot prints—not Jill’s. There was 
another—another. Oh, Lord! he mustn’t miss them. 

Suddenly, Wash the dog dashed through the 
drifts into the circle of light—leaping and yelping. 
Jetsam seized him and rubbed his nose in the tracks. 

“Sick ’em—sick ’em, Wash. Find ’er. Here, come 
along.”’ 

Track by track they followed. 

Now they lost them. 

Wash went sniffing wildly around in the snow. 
Jetsam gave himself a sharp hit in the chest, so 
sharp that it hurt. 

“Find them tracks agin, ye fool,” he said. But 
it was not he who found them, but Wash. 

The tracks began to be plainer. Jetsam realized 
that it had stopped snowing. He could not tell 
when it had stopped. He began to halloo: “ Dencey 
—Dencey Coffyn, com-hyar—com-hyar,” but the 
wind caught the sound and whipped it to naught. 

Still the tracks. Goshamighty, how fur had she 
come, anyway? He must be almost to Hummock 
Pond. He could hear the breakers beyond Ram 
Pasture. The tracks were leading down to the pond. 
Would she fall in? 


IN THE STORM 215 


Wash, ahead in the darkness, gave one terrific 
yelp. In suffocating wonder, Jetsam dashed after 
him. 

Was this Dencey? Such a strange object— 
crouched in a ball like a cat, wrapped in her coat, 
her big bonnet hiding her. 

Jetsam seized her arm and dragged her up to her 
feet. Perfectly limp she was, falling back to the 
snow. 

“Dencey,” he called. “Dencey!” For one wild 
moment he thought she was dead. Then came a 
faint moan, and Jetsam sat her down and began to 
slap her cheeks and lift her arms. 

“Don’t, Jetsam,” she said mildly. “I’m so 
sleepy.” 

“Ye’re freezin’-sleepy,” he shouted. ‘Wake up. 
Darn ye, Dencey—wake up!”’ 

He slapped her rudely, fiercely, and suddenly, to 
his overwhelming joy, she slapped him back—a 
good sound slap, too. 

“Thee stop that, Sam Jetsam.” 

_ “No, I won’t stop. Not till ye’re plumb awake. 
Kin ye stand now? Oh, but yer teeth is chatterin’. 
Yer awful cold. Ain’t ye?” 

“Yes.’”’ She began to cry. “Oh, Jetsam, where 
are we?” 

Yes—where were they? The blackness of their 
situation suddenly made his teeth chatter, too— 
with terror. Hummock Pond? He was almost sure 


216 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


they were there. And if so, there wasn’t a soul near, 
not a house for miles. Jill’s cabin was the nearest, 
and that three miles away. Could he carry Dencey? 
He feared not. Dencey was no sylph. She weighed 
heavier than he. If he failed, it would mean death 
to both of them. He stood in a puzzle. 

Then he remembered a sheep shelter that was on 
the edge of Hummock Pond. It was for the pro- 
tection of sheep in just such weather as this. It 
wasn’t much, open all of one side. But Jim Sears 
used it for a hunting covert. Once Jetsam had been 
with him there three days to help him. Could he 
find it now in the blackness? He couldn’t leave 
Dencey to search for it. That was certain. 

She was sitting down again. 

“Git up,” he shouted angrily. “Ye want to die, 
Dence Coffyn? There, now. Come with me.”’ 

He pulled her to her feet, and with one arm about 
her, the other holding his lantern, started forward. 
He had only gone a few feet when he stumbled and 
fell flat. 

He got up swearing, seized his lantern, which luck- 
ily was still alight, and kicked the object angrily. 

Then suddenly he stopped kicking. 

“Oh, Lord, my wood-pile!”’ he cried out. 

“Thy wood-pile?”’ queried Dencey. 

“Yes, Lordy, Lordy! Don’t ye see? Hit’s the 
wood I brung for Jim this fall. We’re near the 
sheep shelter. That’s sure.” 


IN THE STORM 217 


He clutched Dencey and started forward again. 
The exercise began to revive Dencey. She re- 
membered. 

“Oh, Jetsam, don’t go with the showman!” she 
wailed. 

“Do I look like it?” he answered wrathfully. 

“But why are we taking all these walks? It isn’t 
a good place to walk.” 

But just at this moment their feet splashed into 
the skim-frozen water. Jetsam bent down and 
tasted it. It was fresh. 

“T know now,” he shouted. “Hit’s Hummock 
Pond. I got my bearin’s.” 

He listened keenly to catch the sound of the surf 
which he knew was south of the pond. Then made 
his way along the water’s edge. A few feet, and the 
lantern sparkled upon the crazy hut buried in the 
snow. He pulled Dencey around to the open front 
of it. 

Well, it wasn’t so bad. The snow had swirled in a 
drift all one end. But the other end was clear. And 
the walls and roof kept off the worst of the wind. 
Three sheep were huddled in the dry corner. He 
pushed Dencey up against them. 

“They'll warm ye,” he said. 

Then, anxiously, hurriedly, he began to search 
the hut. Jim generally left things here to come back 
to. Yes, here was the tinder box where Jim always 
~ kept it, and a heap of dry grass. Hurriedly, too, he 


218 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


brought in some of the wood. Dencey did not offer 
to help him. He knew she was stupefied with cold. 

Then at last he lighted the fire. The forsaken 
place leaped into visibility, life, and warmth— 
warmth. 

But the sheep were frightened and stumbled 
baa-ing out into the night. 

“Oh, the poor sheep,” sobbed Dencey. But she 
crouched close to the fire, warming her hands. 

“These three’ fingers don’t feel anything at all,” 
she commented. And Jetsam hastened to rub them 
with snow until sharp pains ran through them. 
And Dencey began to cry again. Oh, he wished she 
weren't so sleepy, sitting there by the fire. He 
wished there were more wood. 

He went to the opening and peered out. Yes, it 
was as he had thought. The storm was clearing, 
great scudding clouds driving from the north and 
the wind like a thousand devils. Getting colder 
every minute. He must hurry for dear life. He went 
back to Dencey. 

“Dencey,” he said, “I got to go back an’ tell 
the folks so they'll come an’ git ye. Try not to go to 
sleep, Dencey, for God’s sake, try. An’ here’s some 
dry wood—keep puttin’ it on the fire.” 

“T don’t want to be alone,’’ quavered Dencey. 
“Don’t thee go and leave me alone.” 

Jetsam shook her angrily. “Try to understand. 
I got to go ’cause it’s gittin’ colder an’ we ain’t got 


IN THE STORM 219 


dry wood. An’ the stars is out, I can find my way. 
Ye won’t be alone, anyway,” he added quickly. 
“Here’s Wash, he’ il stay with ye.” 

“Lie down, Wash. Lie down thar.” The dog with 
a reluctant whine lay close to Dencey. 

Then, with one anxious look at both of them, 
Jetsam hurried out. 

Oh, a long, long way under fitful stars. Now they 
swam in mad race, as the swift clouds passed them. 
Now were lost in the fleece, now popped out bright 
and clear again. How well he knew them and their 
stations over the wide moor. And the moon, too, 
was rising. 

All this was to his good. But not the cold. 

The cold was a fierce enemy and the wind a 
fighter. It came out of the north and struck him in 
the face. It searched his jacket and his shirt and 
made them as naught. The whole front of him 
seemed naked to the wind. He must push into it 
faster—faster. Dencey didn’t want to be alone. 
What if she let the fire die out? Oh, hurry, hurry! 

He must have passed Jill’s cottage by now. If 
only he wouldn’t go so slow. Always slower. He fell 
down and scrambled up again on perfectly stilt-like 
legs, pushed on again with feet that were two lumps 
of ice and didn’t want to move. 

Again he fell, again got up and faced the wind. 
Then came Farmer Brown’s light far over there 
on the other road. Brown always kept a light on a 


220 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


night like this. And at last, at last, the lights of town 
windows, the blessed streets of town. 


It was two o’clock of the morning, but the Coffyn 
house was all alight. Alight with activity and 
sorrow. 

Hedassah Gardner had come back almost frozen. 
He had been out to Jill’s cottage. Everybody was 
thinking, “The child is dead by now.” Everybody 
said cheerily, ““We’ll find her. We won’t give up.” 

Mrs. Coffyn sat alone by the keeping-room fire, 
stony still with hands hard-clasped. Always the 
words of telling Tom this thing when he came home. 
As if she didn’t care about Dencey, but only about 
telling Tom. 

“Tom, I didn’t take care of thy daughter, not 
right care. She got lost in the Commons. Yes, Tom 
she’s ” Then the words stopped and began over 
again, and kept her from praying. 

Peggy Runnel, in the kitchen, was getting break- 
fast. Of course, it was night yet, but she had to do 
something. 

Then the door banged open without a knock and 
Jetsam’s ragged figure was in the middle of the 
kitchen. 

“T’ve found her. Whar’s Mis’ Sees said. his 
queer, strained voice. 

“Ye’ve found what? Thee!” Pevay: s contempt 
denied it. 


IN THE STORM ery, 


“Yes, I did, too. She’s out on the Commons.” 

“Dead—dead!” screamed Peggy and went, 
laughing and crying all at once, to the keeping 
room. 

Lydia rushed into the kitchen. 

Jetsam stepped close to her. 

“Listen to me,” he shouted, “an’ don’t ye act 
like this hyar fool. I found her. I found Dencey.” 

Lydia’s spirit beat upward in an instant psalm. 
“Oh, thank God—thank God !”’ 

“Keep still, will ye?” said Jetsam with threaten- 
ing hands uplifted. “Ye must be quick—listen.” 

Lydia seized the hands and held them—a gesture 
she had with her own children. 

“What is thee sayin?’”’ she demanded. “Thee 
found her? Was she—she oa 

“No—I tell ye. She was livin’. She’s in that sheep 
shelter o’ Jim Sears’, the second one this side 0’ 
Hummock Pond. Not the first one. Do ye hyar?”’ 

“Yes, yes, I hear, thee need not scream.” Joy 
flooded Lydia’s face as she leaned toward him. 

“‘An’ there was a leetle firewood, an’ I wrapped 
her in a ole blanket. Hit was awful dirty, ma’am. 
But hit was all they was.” 

“Yes, yes, child.”” Lydia put her arm about the 
thin shoulders, but he struggled away. 

“But the fire’ll die down. She’s too near froze to 
tend it. Ef it does, she’ll die, too. Do ye hyar?” 
Hoarser and hoarser his voice. Would his teeth 


422 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


lock with chattering so he could not speak? “Come 
along. I’ll show ye the way. Ye don’td ast mistake 
it. Hit’s the second hut, not the fust. Hurry. 
Hurry.” 

He pulled her rudely. 

“We'll find it, child. Hedassah knows,” said 
Lydia. 

She saw a look of wild relief spring into the 
boyish face. He went ashen pale, and his shoulders 
hunched upward in helpless shaking and quivering. 

Lydia ran to the next room and, reaching with a 
long stick out the window, knocked loudly on the 
window next door. 

Martha White’s frightened face appeared. 

“What is it?-—Oh, is she t 

““No—no. She’s found. Come quick and tend the 
boy. He’s in a hard chill by the kitchen fire. Hot 
foot bath and the cordial in the kitchen closet. 
Quick!” 

Lydia did not wait for coat and hat, but ran out 
of the house and down the snowy street to Hedas- 
sah Gardner’s. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


SAMMIE JETSAM IN LIMBO 


| fr tough as a little moor pine, was none 


the worse for her adventure. She sat 

wrapped in three blankets by the fire all 
day and drank hot soup and enjoyed being a 
heroine. And when, the following morning, the boys 
pounded on her door, she had no thought of over- 
sleeping her breakfast. 

But Jetsam lay in the little room off the kitchen 
tossing and muttering with fever. And by nightfall 
had entered the dread limbo of a serious illness. 

“Dencey,” he would call hoarsely. “Dencey 
Coffyn—com-hyar 

But when she came, frightened and wild-eyed, 
he did not know her at all. Then he would swear 
strange oaths flavored with the sea and rip out the 
language of Dicky Dicks, so that Lydia would send 
her daughter hastily from the room. 

All the while Lydia’s pale purity bent over him, 


223 


224 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


apparently not hearing the wild obscenities. Always 
through Lydia’s mind marched the remembrance 
of her run down the street to Hedassah Gardner’s 
and how she was in heaven then. Tom need not be 
told that his daughter was dead. Dencey lived. 
This boy had lifted her from hell into that heaven. 
Her heart still sang with it. She never forgot. 

Lydia was very busy. She washed the boy from 
head to foot, wrung out hot flaxseed poultices for 
his chest, cooled his face with water. At times she 
held his hot, hard little hands trying to comfort 
him. 

“But don’t ye hyar ’er callin’?”’ he would argue. 
“She’s dyin’, durn ye! Dencey’s dyin’ an’ ye won’t 
leave me go to her.” 

“Dencey is well,” she told him, with tears 
suddenly stinging her eyes. “It was only thy- 
self cried out just now. There—be still.” 

“Oh, Mother”—Dionis would catch at her 
mother’s dress hastening through the kitchen— 
“is he—is he goin’ to die?” 

“T do not know. He is very ill.” 

“But,” Dionis wailed, “he will die in sin. He 
hired himself to the showman. He hasn’t repented.” 

Her mother stopped sternly. 

“What does thee know of repentance, Dionis? 
He forgot the show and all its vanities to go out 
and save thee from the storm. Sometimes there are 
martyr spirits among us and we do not see.” 


SAMMIE JETSAM IN LIMBO 22s 


Dencey, somewhat stunned at the sudden change 
in her mother, watched her disappear into the 
darkened room. 

It was a terrible illness—lung fever, so the doctor 
called it. Jetsam did not rally but went down and 
down. The poor ill-nourished body had no weapons 
to fight the strong disease. The starved mind and 
ill-conditioned spirit had but a lax hold on life. 
Injun Jill’s wrath, lonely pathways across the 
moors, wood-chopping in the bitter wood-shed, 
rough usage by the sailors, anger, cheating, sudden 
fights by dirty candlelight—these peopled the boy’s 
mind. 

“Look out thar,” he would warn Lydia, flinging 
out an arm. “The man’s got a knife. Lordy, whad 
I tell ye? Ye fool! Whad I tell ye?” 

So the young desolate mind unfolded itself before 
Lydia. The slow weeks went by and she tended the 
skeleton-like body with tears of pity running down 
her cheeks. 

“He has had no chance—no chance,” she mur- 
mured. “He will go out of life knowing noth- 
ing.” 

She began to pray for the waif as though he had 
been her own flesh and blood. 

Meanwhile, to Dionis, going back and forth to 
school, life seemed abruptly changed and empty. 
Jetsam was in trouble and she had nothing to do 
with it. She couldn’t bear to go into the strange 


226 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


sick-room. Yet all the while she kept feeling as she 
did that time she pulled out her loose tooth. Some- 
thing gone—yet something hurt. 

It had been a great burden going out to the 
Commons to teach Jetsam and to get him things to 
eat. Now Mother had taken all that burden. And 
yet Dionis was mad at Mother. 

Injun Jill was mad, too. She came to the back 
door begging and pleading to see Jetsam. 

“Gif pack my booy,” she said angrily. “He 
mine. Mine.” 

Mother’s eyes flashed. 3 

“Tf he is thine, thee has strangely abused Bee 
Go away. Thee shall not frighten the poor lad.” 

“Ye got doozen childrenth,” declared Injun Jill. 
“‘An’ ye coom dake mine, mine. Ye no Christion. 
Ye heathen.” She flung her two har ds wildly above 
her head. 

Then Mother threatened her with the sheriff. 
Injun Jill went away, stamping and crying. Injun 
Jill, bereft of all her power. 

And now Dionis was sorry for Injun Jill and mad 
at Mother. What for? Dionis had the unchancy 
experience of seeing abysses in her own soul. 

Meanwhile, up and down Nantucket everybody 
was calling Dencey “good.” Everybody knew that 
“Lydia’s Dencey” had gonc out into the storm on 
the Commons to save a boy’s soul. “Who had ever 
thought that Dionis Coffyn was so religious? Why, 


SAMMIE JETSAM IN LIMBO 227 


she seemed of frivolous conversation. Well, thee 
never can tell.” 

But Dionis didn’t feel ‘“‘good.” Hadn’t she 
broken her promise to Aunt Lovesta in going out 
on the Commons? 

What did they mean? 

Then came the most horrible day of all, when 
the littlest children were sent over to Martha 
White’s and everybody went about the house 
whispering because they thought Sammie Jetsam 
was going to die. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


JETSAM DISCOVERS THE COFFYNS 


F JETSAM, in the fullness of vigor and 
| sufficiency had entered into the Coffyn family, 
no doubt he would have flung out again the 
first day. The decorum, the pious phrases, the 
regularity would have been impossible. But he 
came to it by way of suffering and silence. 

The first time he awoke, he did not know where 
he was. The room was dim. He was aware of feeling 
very smooth and cool all over his skin—a kind of 
silkiness. Jetsam had never been really clean before, 
and he was not at all sure he liked it. The second 
time he awoke, someone in a white cap bent over 
him and said, “God be thanked, thee is better.” 

This struck Jetsam as terribly embarrassing. 

“Don’t say that thar,” he murmured. 

“Why not, dear child?” 

“Cause hit’s silly. Me and God!” 


228 


JETSAM DISCOVERS THE COFFYNS 229 


“My dear, my dear,” said the shocked Lydia. 

As time went on, he realized that the person who 
moved so softly about the room was Mrs. Coffyn. 
He was afraid. He had always run away when she 
appeared. He couldn’t run now. Jetsam had suf- 
fered much in his short life. He had always suffered 
alone, drooping and muffled like a hurt bird until 
the visitation be past. Now he would waken with 
pain in the most unexpected places. Lydia’s in- 
vasion upon it was only one more pain to bear. 
She gave him a hot drink, rubbed his bony back 
with lard, the gentle hand going up and down, up 
and down. The pain retired. 

And suddenly, in Jetsam’s hard cold world, was 
a new thing—tender, brooding, like an unbelievable 
dawn to one who had never seen the sunrise. Ah, 
warm, living, immeasurable. Lydia, as she turned 
away, felt herself suddenly clutched in a wildling 
embrace, and the boy’s sobbing frightened her. 

Only a moment, and Jetsam never did it again, 
but from that moment Jetsam began to mend. 

Soon he was able to come out by the great kit- 
chen fire with its generous roar of heat and its 
back log like ancient Yule. Strange for a boy who 
had always snatched a cold breakfast anyhow, 
under the snarls of Injun Jill, to see the Coffyn 
family gather, happy and orderly, about their 
board. First the silent grace. Then the hearty 
eating. Such a plenty of everything and never a 


230 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


morning when there was nothing. Little Ariel was 
given a bowl of porridge to bring to him, and he so 
proud of the duty. 

“ Aw, he can’t do it,” spoke up Kanah. “ He’s too 
little.” 

“‘He’s not too little to learn kindness,” answered 
Lydia. And Dionis came to steady the baby steps. 

After breakfast came the long Silence which 
certainly seemed foolish to Jetsam. All heads bowed 
in a compact of family love and aspiring. Some- 
times the boys wiggled, or Ariel got up and wan- 
dered among them. Jetsam watched it all—the quiet 
faces, the immovable white caps of Lydia, Peggy, 
and Tne. the clock ticking so solemnly in its 
corner, the fire snapping softly to itself. The deep, 
deep aBeerption. A strange foolishness, surely. 

Then, suddenly, chairs rasped back. Everybody 
rushed away to wood-chopping, sweeping, dishes— 
the same duty for the same child every day. Then, 
like a departing whirlwind, the youngsters went to 
school. 

Now Jetsam was well enough to be promoted to 
the keeping room. It was Dencey’s part to wait 
while the others were at supper and tend the keep- 
ing-room fire, and set the chairs about in a generous 
circle for everybody. After supper.they gathered in. 

“Draw into the circle,” Lydia would say cheerily. 
*Tt’s cold to-night.” 

And soon they were all busy at something. The 


JETSAM DISCOVERS THE COFFYNS 231 


boys doing lessons. Jane with her splendid silk quilt 
all of gray and white pieces. Dencey telling a story 
to Ariel that made his eyes pop with wonder. Some- 
times the boys fell to quarreling, and Lydia sent 
them to bed. But, of course, they retired to the 
back yard and had it out. Or Peggy teased Stephen 
till he lost his temper, or the children quarreled 
over their play and Lydia meted out mistaken 
justice always favoring the youngest. But spite of 
all, it was a room of peace and trust, a room that 
was piling up memories into a preciousness that 
would flower some day into generous deeds and 
sturdy virtue. 

Jetsam watched all this in silence. Jill’s cabin, 
with its old bitterness, its chilling fear, seemed on 
some other planet. He felt weightless and light in his 
freedom from it. 

Sometimes Jetsam put wood on the fire, some- 
times he showed the boys a new rig for their boats. 
But, for the most part, he was overwhelmed with 
shyness, a fish out of water. The boy who had been 
the “baddest boy in town” was afraid to speak. 

And always he was uncomfortably aware that 
he was missing something. He had not caught the 
clue! 

Then, one afternoon, the household happiness 
was augmented. Captain Coffyn’s ship was re- 
ported in near-by waters. Everybody bustled about 
in expectation, and that night Captain Coffyn 


232 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


came into the room like a splendid breeze. His 
face was the bright shining tan of those who are 
just come off the sea, his hat and coat were covered 
with snow. 

Lydia sprang up with a low, instinctive cry—the 
same sound, Jetsam noted, that she had uttered 
that night when he told her of Dencey. She ran to 
him and helped him off with his coat, Stephen took 
his dripping hat. Then they brought him to the 
fire. 

“But it’s too hot,” cried Tom. “It isn’t really 
cold outside.” 

How they waited upon him, bringing in a 
generous supper so he could eat in their midst. 
Ariel climbed into his lap asking over-and over, 
“Ts it really Father?” Dionis hung upon his 
shoulder and kissed him whenever she brought 
him a dish. 

“T’m going to stay,” he told her, “a good long 
while, this time. Thee can tell that to the King o’ 
the Whales. I know he’ll be glad.” 

““We are the ones to be glad,” said Lydia softly. 

Then indeed did peace settle down over the busy 
household, as into it entered the abiding love of 
Lydia and Tom Coffyn. Lydia became sweetly 
young as she went about her tasks. Tom was the 
life of everything. The children took no accounting 
of this love. But it was there, and each one un- 
consciously basked in it, breathed it like the air. 


JETSAM DISCOVERS THE COFFYNS 233 


Each child, even Peggy in the kitchen, was fed 
and nourished by it. 

And strangely, too, it fed their faith. Something 
seemed to sweep the human love into higher spaces, 
where it breathed the air of the love of God. 

More and more did the shy, starved Sammie 
Jetsam know that something was eluding him— 
some richness in which he had no part. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


HUNGER OF THE MIND 


T WASN’T as though Jetsam had not always 
| been hungry. Hungry for bread, hungry for 
the things beyond bread, the relationships of 
life, father, mother, the “belonging” to anybody. 
Hungry for the dim Something beyond even this, 
which might be called a boy’s God. 

He remembered one bitter evening last winter 
when he had been creeping toward Dicky Dicks’s, 
fearful lest Dicky should refuse him shelter. He 
had met Zeke Severance (Hopestill’s brother) going 
whistling up the street toward his big comfortable 
home on North Water Street, his hearth fire and 
warm supper. And on the way to all that he was 
eating a huge piece of pie. 

In blind wrath, Jetsam had sprung at him, 
knocked the pie out of his hand and a front tooth 
out of his mouth. Then he threw the pie into the 
gutter and went and hid behind Dicky’s bar, too 

234 


HUNGER OF THE MIND 235 


miserable even to cry. The dim things he wanted 
clutched him so he could scarcely breathe. 

And nov, here in the Coffyn household, was that 
same keen taste in his mind. A precious thing, such 
hunger—almost worth the starvation to produce it. 

The Coffyn household had its mental interests, 
all the more real for being so casual. They centered 
in Tom. Tom brought back the world into the 
home. He told of the snowy, soaring peaks of the 
Andes, the curious beliefs of the Chinese, the 
religious ceremonies in South Pacific islands. But 
most of all he told of flowers. He had his book of 
pressed tropical plants and spent his evenings 
classifying them. Sometimes he would stop to re- 
count how he had found some flower, his narrow 
escapes in jungle or island as he searched. He told of 
curious animals. 

“But in New Holland is a whole class of animals 
utterly different from those of any continent. Why 
should that be? There’s a puzzle for thee,” he said 
eagerly, pinching Dencey’s cheek. 

This was all new to Jetsam. The rough sailors 
and Portuguese brought no such tidings as this to 
Dicky Dicks’s fireside: the new scientific point of 
view which Jetsam’s crude mind caught, recogniz- 
ing the expanding life of it. It was to be the growing 
thought of his own generation. The Severance 
boys listened also, and Dencey crowded close, her 
eyes like dark lakes. 


236 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Of a surety, Jetsam’s hunger was being fed. 

At this time Stephen Grellet, the famous Quaker 
preacher, came on his religious visit to the Island. 
He was the Coffyns’ guest—a little thin-faced 
man with a prominent nose, who spoke with a 
French accent and gestured eagerly. But how his 
face shone! He told of forest journeys in Tennessee 
where they lashed two canoes together and set 
the wheels of the carriage in them to cross the river. 
He and his companion had met panthers, bears, 
and wolves on that journey. They had eaten only 
two small corn cakes a day, and the horses ate 
young twigs and leaves. ““My dear Master was 
pleased to bring me through all these difficulties,” 
he said. 

Grellet had met King Bernadotte of Sweden, 
had been in the midst of his gorgeous court. He had 
sat on a sofa with the Emperor of all the Russias, 
prayed with him, and told him of the sufferings of 
his (the Emperor’s) people so that the Emperor 
promised to relieve them. Hetoldof Constantinople, 
Smyrna, and the A‘gean Islands. 

Jetsam sat listening in complete delight, drawn 
to this interesting, fearless, and loving little man. 

Oh, if he only knew whether the Coffyns would 
let him stay! No one had said he might, and he 
dared not ask even Dencey. 

And there was always the background of Injun 
Jill. Indeed, she was more than background. He was 


HUNGER OF THE MIND 237 


still quite weak and daunted with illness when, one 
morning in the kitchen, he looked up and she was 
there—Injun Jill with her same old coat, her same 
cruel domination. 

“Ye coom wid me. My booy, darn ye! Coom, I 
tell ye.”’ And with the old familiar oath she grabbed 
him with both her hands. 

Jetsam wrenched himself free and fled. Fled 
through the cold front hall up the front stairs to 
Lydia’s room. He burst in upon her, she on her 
knees, threw arms about her, almost knocking her 
backward. 

“Don’t let her take me,” he panted. “I can’t hit 
her hard enough now.” 

- Lydia loosened his clasp and rose up, straighten- 
ing her cap. 

“Thee should not come in now,” she said 
severely. Then, seeing his pleading face, she added: 
“Thee stay here. I will deal with Injun Jill.” 

Crouching in the bare gray room, Jetsam heard 
Lydia go down the stairs. Heard her clear com- 
mands and Injun Jill’s angry outbursts. Then the 
back door opened, and Jill, breathing out threaten- 
ing and slaughter, went down the street. 

It was several nights after this rescue. The young- 
sters had all gone to bed. Tom was away, having 
gone on some personal business to New York. 
Lydia was carefully covering the great kitchen fire 
with ashes. Then she rose from her knees, took the 


238 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


last candle from the mantel, and started toward the 
door. 

“Thee must go to bed now,” she told Jetsam. 
“Thee mustn’t linger after the others are gone.” 

Jetsam seemed to force his lips to speak. 

““Mis’ Coffyn—be I well now?” 

“Thee must say ‘am I’—not ‘be I.’ Yes, thee is 
well. Thee has only coughed a few times to-day.” 

“Mis’ Coffyn, I made up them coughs, made ’em 
every time ye come int’ the room.” 

“Made them up!” Lydia’s candle slanted, drip- 
ping the sperm. “What does thee mean?” 

“T don’t want to be well. I don’t. I’d ruther 
be sick.”” He turned his back upon her going over 
to the warm hearth as if with that old instinct of 
the suppliant. 

“T wisht I could stay sick,” he repeated. 

“That is wicked.”’ Lydia came and put her candle 
back on the mantel prepared to labor with this 
strange child. “God made thee well, and prayer to 
God.” 

He could hardly speak now for the hurried 
breaths in his throat. 

“No, it hain’t wicked,” he broke out. “’Cause if 
I could stay sick I could stay hyar.”’ 

“But thee is to stay here anyway. Why!”’ said 
Lydia, astonished. “Didn’t thee understand that? 
Did thee suppose after thee saved Dionis’s life we 
would send thee away?” 


HUNGER OF THE MIND 239 


The boy knelt down, stretching out his hands 
over the warm ashes. He did not speak, but Lydia 
saw that his hands trembled and his teeth were 
chattering as if with chill. 

“Of course, thee’ll have to earn thy keep,” she 
said thriftily. “Even Stephen’s boys do that.” 

“T kin airn my keep,” he said with unsteady lips. 
“T allus done that, ever sence I could walk.” 


a 
tana! Bl 
Bet ee | 


(UMN ANGARnannnaaAAATAAAATAAAATA,. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 
THE COMMITTEE ON SUFFERINGS 


ETSAM slept little that night. He lay awake 
J in a floating dream, the happiness of the poet 

when some new poem is spreading a lighted 
mist throughout his mind. He thought of them all 
in the big house lying in their separate beds and he 
in his bed, his own now, warm, shut in from the 
world. He loved them all, Stephen so fine mannered, 
Ariel who climbed on his lap and called him “my 
Jeshum,” Captain Tom, and the white-kerchiefed 
Lydia. 

But of them all it was Dencey whom his mind 
singled out to dream upon. Dencey was his own. 
He knew her ways and she knew his. He had saved 
her from freezing in the Commons. Mrs. Coffyn 
had said so. A great glow of pride went over 
him. 

And from this grand house Dencey had come out 


240 


COMMITTEE ON SUFFERINGS © 241 


on the Commons to teach him. Strange for her to 
do that. But it was because of her home she came. 
Dencey interpreted it, and it interpreted Dencey. 
He sighed and turned over in bed. 

“Tt was Dencey done it,” he said aloud, and 
suddenly Dencey’s sunburned face swam before 
him, her dancing, merry eyes. 

Young as he was, one might say he fell in love 
with Dencey that night. That was too bad. His 
chances would have been so much better if he 
hadn’t done it. 

In this night, too, was born Jetsam’s loyalty, and 
that was no mean creature. What the Coffyns did 
was the norm. What the Coffyns wished must be 
performed. What the Coffyns believed—well, it 
was all right for them to be Quakers. But he 
wouldn’t be. It was too blame foolish. 

And the very next morning he saw Quakerism 
at its worst. The Committee on Sufferings arrived 
at the house. 

Five men and five women, Aunt Susanna the 
self-constituted head, filed into the keeping room. 
They were as forbidding a decemvirate as could 
well be found, the men frowning under their broad 
hats, the women with shawls exactly adjusted 
(it took hours to do it), their arms folded in the 
shawls, their lips pressed into straight lines. So did 
their errand brand them. 

“Well, Lydia,” said Susanna. “We have come 


24.2 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


to look at thy belongings. They say thy floor cov: 
erings are not what they should be.” 

Peggy peeked into the keeping room. 

“Drat’em,”’ she murmured. Peggy, too, was loyal. 

“What’ll they do?” whispered Jetsam, glancing 
in at Lydia’s troubled face. 

“Do! Thee’ll see. They’ll do enough. The ole 
Squelchin’ Committee. Last year they pulled up all 
Judy Swain’s larkspurs ’cause they said they was 
too blue.” 

They came into the kitchen and inspected the 
dishes. 

“Thank goodness, I’d jist washed em,” was 
Peggy’s comment. 

They looked at the window curtains and upstairs 
at the bed draperies. Blue was a worldly colour 
and taboo. In the keeping room they found a chair 
with a mahogany rose on the back, and whipped out 
a chisel and hammer which they always carried, 
and promptly removed it. 

Lydia’s face was a picture, and Jetsam would 
have liked to fly at them and scratch them. 

Then in the best parlor they found what they had 
come for—a crimson carpet. They withdrew their 
steps from it. 

“T am astonished at thee, Friend Lydia,” spoke 
Liakim Cole. “Thee must have this vain and 
worldly thing removed before next Monthly Meet- 


ing. 


COMMITTEE ON SUFFERINGS 243 


Lydia’s face went perfectly white. 

“T shall not remove it, Friend Liakim,’ she 
answered. 

“Thee must. Does thee wish the Monthly Meet- 
ing to deal with thee?” 

“No, I hope it will not.” 

“Then thee will remove it?” 

“ce No.” 

Aunt Susanna seized her arm. “What on earth 
does thee mean, Lydia? I never knew that worldly 
things had such’a hold on thee.” 

Lydia suddenly flushed as red as she had been 
white. 

“Tt is not the thing,” she said. “It is the gift. My 
husband gave me this the day he came home this 
time. If I destroy it, it will be in disobedience and 
ingratitude to my husband. Tell that to the 
Monthly Meeting.” 

They said little further. They seemed to know 
Lydia. And a few moments later she held open the 
door for them to file out. 

Pathetic figures. This desperate care always 
means just one thing—that the living faith is 
waning. Already, in those days in Nantucket, 
the strong, soul-freshening vision of Quakerism was 
growing dim. These were they who knew its ador- 
able preciousness, and they were trying to snatch 
it back into life. Prohibitions, “shalt-nots,” and 
punishments were to protect the heavenly thing. 


244 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


They knew not that life could be renewed only 
with more life. 

Out in the kitchen, Jetsam was planning with 
Peggy. “Ef they come agin, we kin fight ’em,” he 
said breathlessly. “Steve’s as big as a man, an’ I’m 
feisty now. Even Kanah he could bite ’em.” 

“Don’t thee dare to say that to Mis’ Coffyn. She 
don’t believe in fightin’. She’s fur peace. All the 
same, they won't git the floor-coverin’, mark my 
word.” 

Jetsam and Dionis came into the keeping room 
where Lydia was nervously replacing the Chinese 
rose jars on the mantel. Even the children could see 
that she was cut to the quick. Jetsam, longing to do 
so, dared not speak, but Dionis ventured. 

“Mother, I’m sorry they broke thy chair,’’ she 
said. 

“Child,” answered Lydia bitterly, “we can be 
glad if they do not break somebody’s heart.” 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


GOING BEFORE HER GUIDE 


HE “heart” Lydia spoke of was none other 

than Aunt Lovesta’s. Being an adult heart, 

the young folk took little account of it. 

Jetsam indeed saw something of the truth, but 

Dionis could not realize that anybody could break 
anything about Aunt Lovesta. 

Jetsam was sitting in his little room reading. 
He read every book he could get hold of—even 
almanacs. The door of the kitchen was open, and he 
saw Lovesta Coffyn come in. She said: 

“Lydia, stop thy work a minute. I want to talk 
with thee.”’ 

Lydia turned anxiously. 

“Oh, Lovesta, has it come?”’ she asked. 

“Yes. I fear so.”’ 

Lydia took her hands out of the dough, washed 
them carefully, and came over to the fire. 

245 


246 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“T had to seek thee,’’ Lovesta said with a dis-' 
turbedness which no one had ever seen upon her 
face. “I’ve taken it to the Lord. That should be 
enough. But I get no peace. It is as if I could not 
breathe. At last I seem to be clear to come to 
thee.” 

But, having got so far, Lovesta did not proceed. 
She sat slowly twisting her hands together—those 
hands which were usually so quiet. 

“Did they accuse thee outright?” asked Lydia’s 
awed voice. 

Jetsam looked up from his reading. He had al- 
ways listened to whatever he wanted to hear. He 
had always known Nantuelzes news as soon as the 
town crier. 

“Yes, they vaited me this morning. The whole 
Committee on Sufferings. Susanna is very severe. 
She says—they all say,” she choked a little, “that 
I go before my Guide.” 

Of course, Jetsam did not understand this. What 
did she mean? The mystery fascinated him. 

“How can they dare!” broke out the indignant 
Lydia. “Thee with thy power of the Spirit. It is 
outrageous!”’ 

Lovesta looked down at her hands. 

“The worst of it is,’ she said dully, “it is true 
—that i is, it was true once. This is my punish- 
ment.’ 

“Lovesta, what is thee saying? It can’t be. Why, 


GOING BEFORE HER GUIDE = 247 


thy testimony last First Day. The Power was in 
it, flowing over us all. And hearts were tendered. 
There was Noah Swain, who never before * 

Lovesta’s face lighted. “Yes, the Lord was with 
me last First Day,” she said. “The watering was 
from above. I felt the Divine ease. J did nothing.” 

“Tt was only once,” she added. “Almost a year 
ago at Yearly Meeting: It was such a full meeting— 
so many from the Cape and Rhode Island”—her 
head went down. “I wanted them to honour our 
Gay Street meeting. We had had so many and such 
long silences—dull ones. I can always find words, 
Lydia, and I was tempted—and spoke. I[—I—went 
before my Guide—that once.” 

Jetsam leaned forward, his eyes fixed. What was 
this thing they were so sure they had and so sure 
they hadn’t? It made his flesh creep. 

“Yes,” agreed Lydia after a horrified silence. 
“T remember that testimony. I thought it was my 
fault that it seemed so bare of the Spirit.” 

“Tt was bare of the Spirit and richened by 
Beelzebub,” Lovesta accused herself. “ But I have 
never done it since. I repented—repented day long 
and night long. I did not speak in meeting again 
for months—thee knows. Nay, even when the 
Spirit urged me, I held back until at last the for- 
giveness was sure. Peace and Life flowed so I could 
on no account stop them. The Lord has loosed me 
from my bonds.” 


248 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


She looked up. It was not the firelight made 
her face shine so strangely. 

Jetsam was frightened. He remembered what 
Dionis had said about Jesus speaking to Aunt 
Lovesta. Evidently it was true. He wanted to shut 
the door but he did not dare. 

“Indeed, indeed, thee has borne testimony,” said 
Lydia. ‘Never such rich testimony as thee does 
now.” 

Lovesta’s light quenched like a snuffed candle. 

“Susanna says I shall not speak again. The 
Committee will report to the Monthly Meeting. 
I may not even speak next First Day. Lydia, it will 
kill me.” 

“How dare they quench the Spirit! They sha’n’t 
do it,” Lydia said doggedly. 

“But they will,” said Lovesta. “I confessed to 
them as I have to thee. But they say I go before 
my Guide every First Day, and—and that I must 
acknowledge that before they will pardon me. They 
say I use many and strange words they never 
heard—that I make up my sentences beforehand. 
I do not. I do not.” 

Lovesta began to tremble. “Lydia, I cannot bear 
it,’ she burst out. “I tell thee I cannot bear it!” 
And Lovesta, the strong, broke down completely, 
bowing her coped head, hiding her TpOUD HE face in 
her hands. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


SOMEONE IS HUNGRY 


HE Committee on Sufferings forbade Lo- 

vesta Coffyn to preach. The cruelty of their 

decision was perhaps unknown to themselves. 

They none of them had the “preaching spirit” 

which Lovesta possessed. They knew not what it 

meant, that sealing of the fountain of expression, 

that shutting in of a power whose nature was to 

come forth, which so imprisoned could break the 
heart. 

The report of the Committee came up in Monthly 
Meeting, and spite of the best efforts of Lovesta’s 
friends, the interdict was signed. Her minute was 
taken away. She could no longer go to any city and 
speak, for the interdiction was reported everywhere. 
She could no longer follow her instinct of loving 
solicitude for those far away. She no longer could 
be soul-lighted with enterprise. 

249 


250 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Thus began Lovesta’s long silence, so well known 
in the annals of Nantucket, as it is also known that, 
after twenty-five years, the decision was rescinded, 
and Lovesta bloomed once more with the Divine 
word. She had a concern to preach in Scandinavia 
and traveled from end to end of the Scandinavian 
peninsula, speaking the words of life. | 

But now, in these first tragic days, Lovesta kept 
her house. She was shamed before the world. But 
her chief suffering was not shame but suffocation. 
She began to lose flesh. She would not eat. She 
lived quite alone. Her husband had been killed in 
a battle with a whale in the South Pacific, her two 
young sons had shipped last year on a whaling 
voyage. 

Lydia went to her and pleaded for hours for 
Lovesta to come to live with her. 
“T will not bring disgrace on thy house,”’ Lovesta 

asserted in that new hard voice she had. 

“Thee cannot bring disgrace when thee has no 
fault,’ Lydia answered. 

“Thee would lose thy friends.” 

“Tf my friends fall away from thee, they are no 
true friends,” said Lydia the valiant. 

At last, almost by physical dragging, she came to 
Lydia’s house. 

Wonderful how the presence of the young folk 
healed her. Jane was in love with.Gideon Whippy 
across the street, and Lovesta never tired of watch- 


SOMEONE IS HUNGRY 251 


ing the progress of the courtship. Little lame Rosie 
came to her for comfort and Dionis came to her for 
stories. 

Dionis, big girl though she was now, seemed 
never to sense that Aunt Lovesta was defeated. 
When the family were gathered about the fire and 
other young folk came in, Dionis was sure to ask her 
to tell of that time she saved the young girl from a 
foreign ship, that time she stopped the burly giant 
from beating his son in the New York street and 
then found a new home for the little boy. 

Lovesta would begin timidly but would soon be 
in midstream of the story with the children all 
listening open-mouthed. 

Wherever Aunt Lovesta came, came always ad- 
venture. Sometimes the adventure was of her own 
making, sometimes it seemed attracted by her mere 
presence, as the magnet draws the needle. 

After Aunt Lovesta had been at the house some 
months and her face had grown a little brighter, 
the adventure began. 

Jetsam awoke with a start in the middle of the 
night, thinking Injun Jill was prowling about with 
her candle. He jumped up and ran into the kitchen. 
There was prowling, certainly, but the prowlers 
were Aunt Lovesta and Mrs. Coffyn, and each held 
a sputtering candle. About them the shadows re- 
treated into the abysses of the great kitchen. 

“Is thee quite sure?” asked Lydia excitedly. 


252 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Oh, yes! I never had a surer leading. I was 
broad awake when it came. It seemed as though I 
had been wakened to receive it. And instantly there 
was borne in upon my mind, ‘Someone is hungry.’” 

“*Someone is hungry,’” repeated Lydia. “But 
who can it be?”’ 

“T do not know that,” said Lovesta. “ But some- 
one is hungry. That I know, and deeply distressed, 
too.” 

“Then we must make haste,’ 
monplacely. 

Jetsam found voice at last. 

““Be somebody sick?” he questioned. “I kin go 
an’ git Dr. Brown.” 

“No, child,” said Lydia, opening the bread box. 
“We must provide food, that is all.” 

“Not merely food, but a good meal,” insisted 
Aunt Lovesta. “T’ll call Stephen to kill a chicken.” 

“If thee ever can wake him,” said Lydia. “He 
may object, too.” 

Jetsam looked from one to the other. He didn’t 
in the least know what it was all about, but he 
determined to be part of it. 

“T kin git a chicken easy,” he said. “I used to 
steal ’em fur Injun Jill.” 

“T hope thee doesn’t steal them any more!” 
said Lydia. 

“Why, no,” was his innocent answer. “I got a 
plenty now.” 


’ 


said Lydia com- 


SOMEONE IS HUNGRY 253 


“Well, hurry,” said Lydia. “Get thy clothes on 
quick. Shoes and socks, remember. It’s cold yet. 
Try to get an old hen.” 

In a few short moments, Jetsam was making his 
way to the chicken house. The yard looked unreal, 
like a place never seen before. As he came out, the 
South Tower clock struck one doomful stroke into 
the misty silence. It was shivery. Jetsam must have 
lost some of his skill as Jill’s pupil, for the chicken 
squawked dreadfully when he caught it. Whata 
fool thing to be killing a chicken at one o’clock 
at night. He hastily got himself back into the 
house. 

Dionis was in the kitchen, wrapped in a cloak. 

“What is it?” she asked. “Mother, why is thee 
getting breakfast in the night time?” 

“Tt isn’t breakfast, child,’’ said Aunt Lovesta. 
“J have a concern to feed someone who is hungry.” 

“Who?” 

“T don’t know. I must go out and find them.” 

“Oh, Aunt Lovesta, let me go, too, on thy errand 
for God. Thee always said thee’d let me go some- 
time.” 

“No, Dionis,” Lydia began, afraid that Lovesta 
would be hurt at this reference to the forbidden 
journeys. 

“Let her go, Lydia. Who knows what she may 
learn? I shall feed the hungry even if I cannot 
preach. Jetsam, can thee hitch the horse?” 


254 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Yes, ma’am.” Jetsam’s eyes were round with 
amazement. “‘I kin drive ’er, too.” 

Presently the kitchen smelled like midday—the 
chicken roasting on the spit, the fire crackling under 
the pot, the coffee boiling. 

“Huh!” muttered Jetsam. “Somebody’s hungry 
now, fer sure. An’ not hard to find, nuther.” 

Presently all the good things were packed in a 
basket, and presently again Jetsam was driving 
old Betty clattering down the deserted street. 

An upper window was thrown open and Mr. 
Joy’s nightcapped head popped out. 

“What’s all the noise?’ he shouted. Is there a 
fire? Wait, I'll get my bucket.” 

“No,” called Aunt Lovesta’s rich voice. “I have a 
concern, that’s all.” 

The window banged down again; but not before 
the neighbor was heard to mutter, “Thee and thy 
concerns! Don’t see why thee couldn’t have ’em by 
day.” 

“Where to?” Jetsam questioned. 

“T feel for the Polpis road,’”’ said Aunt Lovesta 
dreamily. 

Jetsam allowed himself a low whistle and slapped 
the reins. 

As soon as they cleared the town, they entered a 
veritable fairyland. A dry mist, more usual in the 
fall than now in spring, lay low upon the land. 
Everything was veiled in pearly fog, but the sky 


SOMEONE IS HUNGRY 255 


was clear, the moon shining, and even the stars. 
The fog was curiously radiant. The road skirted the 
swamps east of the harbor—the intense smell of 
the sea. They saw the riding lights of vessels and 
Brant Point Light sprayed into foggy aureoles of 
lustre; on the other side of the road the moors 
stretched into infinity. Sometimes the mist in the 
hollows shined upon by the moon was like white 
lakes. 

The cart rattling along was the only sound. 
Dionis was in the ecstasy of adventure. It was as 
good as going to the Cape. 

She and Aunt Lovesta sat on chairs in the cart, 
and Jetsam stood to drive. They came to the 
Monomoy road and Jetsam mischievously turned 
into it. Instantly Aunt Lovesta’s hand was on his 
arm. 

“T said the Polpis road,”’ she corrected him. 

“Gosh,” he murmured. “ Awful sure, ain’t she!” 

Now, suddenly, Jetsam saw a ghostly nodding 
shape in the air above them. 

“Oh, Lordy,”—he spoke aloud this time. Then 
he saw it was the shadow of old Betty thrown into 
the air by the hanging lantern, and reflected by the 
mist. All the way this shape hovered over them— 
unearthly.. 

“Fool business,’ Jetsam grunted as he watched 
it. “ How fur we goin’ anyways?” 

Aunt Lovesta touched his arm again. “There’s 


256 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 
a light over there,” she said. “I think maybe we 
should have turned up that little road we passed.” 

Jetsam turned accordingly, took the little road, 
which soon disappeared, leaving them bumping 
and lurching over rough turf always toward the 
light. “ Mis’ Coffyn” didn’t know whose light that 
was. She was foolish to drive right up to it this way. 
It might be a lot of sailors with a barrel of rum— 
or even pirates.” 

Now they heard the thunder of the surf, dull and 
deep-toned as it is on Nantucket sands; then 
gradually another sound mingled with it. 

“Listen,” said Aunt Lovesta. ‘“ Hurry—drive 
faster.” 

Sobbing, wild, heartbreaking sobbing, louder 
and louder with the high frightened crying of 
children. A hut loomed abruptly in the fog, and 
before Jetsam could draw rein, Lovesta Coffyn was 
out and running toward it. Dionis, in perfect trust, 
and Jetsam, much frightened, followed her. 

They pushed open the door. The house light blew 
out and there was only blackness and the hor- 
rible uncontrolled sobbing. Then Jetsam’s lantern 
showed a woman on a low bed, her arms surround- 
ing three children like a hovering mother hen. She 
screamed as the lantern flashed in. 

Lovesta went to her and laid her hand on the 
cowering shoulder. 

“What ails thee? I’ve come to help,” she said.. 


SOMEONE IS HUNGRY 257 


A surge of some jargon broken with sobs was 
the only answer, but Jetsam understood the Portu- 
guese of Nantucket docks. 

“Lord A’mighty,” he faltered. “She’s sayin’ 
she’s starved. No vittles for three whole days an’ 
only a little water. Oh, Lordy, an’ ye kept sayin’ 
someone was hungry.” 

He stood there with his mouth open. But Dionis 
dashed out for the basket. In a moment it was 
opened and the children gnawing at the food like 
dogs. Jetsam fought back a sudden wave of tears. 
He’d eaten that way so many times. The mother 
started to eat and then fainted. Then Jetsam had to 
run down to the beach for water, which Aunt 
Lovesta dashed into the poor creature’s face. When 
she came to, she showed them her broken leg, told 
how she had broken it going to the spring in the 
hollow. “I couldn’t get out for food,” she told 
them, with Jetsam for interpreter. “My man, he 
brought us here a week ago. Then he ran away 
*cause there was so many children.” 

“Why did he run away from children?” queried 
the astonished Dionis. 

“Because he was a brute, I’m afraid,” said Aunt 
Lovesta. “But hurry, child. Thee can help.” 

Then what excitement—what deep, absorbing, 
exciting pleasure—putting all to order and making 
the woman and the poor little brown babies com- 
fortable. Aunt Lovesta worked and made every- 


258 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


body else work, too. Jetsam ran down to the misty 
beach for driftwood. 

Dencey swept the room and Jetsam lighted the 
fire. Oh, happy activity! And all the while Jetsam’s 
reason was standing amazed and trying to deny all 
of it. 

“Hit just happened,” he said doggedly. “ Mis’ 
Coffyn couldn’t wake up in her bed and know they 
wus hungry way out here.” 

“How did you know to come?” the woman 
asked. 

“The Lord told me,’’ said Aunt Lovesta simply. 

“But I didn’t say any prayers,” said the woman. 

““Sometimes the Lord hears prayer before it is 
uttered,” said Aunt Lovesta. 

It was hours before they left the hut to drive 
home in the fog that was paling into the early 
dawn of spring. 

What news they had to tell the waiting Lydia 
and the astonished family when they all came down 
to breakfast. 


CHAPTER XL 


A ROYAL SCHOOL 


ITH the coming of Jetsam into the bosom 
\ \) of the family, Dionis, curiously enough, 
lost him. He didn’t even look as he used 
to. He shot up tall as the months went by. They 
could see him grow. And he developed a boyish 
grin that showed all his white teeth, exasperatingly 
merry. No, Dionis never regained that starved 
needy person who waited for her in the Commons. 
Jetsam joined the ranks of the boys in the house— 
Bob, Kanah, and Steve—who teased Dionis. 
Only Jetsam’s teasing was different—more trying 
and continuous. 
“‘Aw, let me carry yer books,” he would insist 
as she started to school. 
“Why should I? I’m no baby, I won’t drop them.” 
“Aw, go long, let me. They’re heavy for ye.” 
“They’re not, either.” 
He followed her out to the street, and, in a mo- 
259 


260 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 

ment when she wasn’t looking, he snatched the 
books and marched along beside her, grinning that 
don’t-care grin of his. 

“Thee give them to me, Sam Jetsam. What’ll 
folks think?—thee walking with me this way.” 

“That’s just it. I want them to think it.” 

Dionis blushed wrathfully. “But thee isn’t, Sam 
Jetsam.” 

“T’m not what? I never said I was anything.” 
And his eyes would seem to light upon her like 
winged things come to rest. Then he looked away. 

“T am yer beau, too. Ye hain’t got no other one.” 

“J don’t want any beau, I tell thee. And I 
wouldn’t have a—a fairy prince on a silk cushion 
if he said, ‘hain’t got no.’”’ 

It was Jetsam’s turn to get red. 

“Damn—I mean darn it. I wish I talked right. 
I try an’ try. I’m as common as pig tracks, I guess.” 

Then, worse luck, Dionis was sorry for him. 

“Thee isn’t common, and I don’t think so.” 

“Ye don’t! Say, I’m darn glad ye don’t. ’d— 
I’d ruther ye’d think it than anybody, honest!” 

Again that look of his blue eyes which Dencey 
“wished he wouldn’t.” It made her so uncomfort- 
able. : 

Again and again was this fight about his going to 
school with her. That is, to the school door, for of 
course Jetsam could not go to the Coffin School. 
He was not of the blood royal. 


A ROYAL SCHOOL 261 


Now that he was well and strong, Lydia took 
cognizance of this. 

She went industriously to get him a place at the 
Fragment School. Poor Lydia. 

“He is quite gentled now,” she told them, “and 
an extremely bright lad. He insists on learning 
Dionis’s lessons with her every evening. I don’t 
see how he keeps up with the class, for he has had 
no instruction. And he reads every book he can 
find in the house, no matter what it is. He reads 
them too quick, but the school here can correct 
that.” 

At last they consented to take him, and Lydia 
returned triumphant. She called Jetsam into the 
keeping room. 

“Thee is to go to the school to-morrow,”’ she told 
him. “They are willing to take thee now.” 

Jetsam’s face flushed out a joyous pride. 

“Will they take me in Dencey’s class? J know I 
could keep up.” 

“Oh—thee isn’t going to the Coffin School. 
Thee can’t go there. It’s the Fragment School.” 

Jetsam’s face changed to the blackest anger 
Lydia had ever dealt with. 

“T won’t go thar,” he said loudly. 

“But thee must. Thee must be grateful for such 
schooling.” 

“T won’t go, I tell ye,” his voice was fierce from 
keeping back the tears. 


ce 


262 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Look here, Samuel. No boy or girl ever answers 
me that way. Thee shall not say ‘won’t’ to me.” 

Jetsam swallowed hard. He looked at her desper- 
ately. 

“All right, I won’t say it, Mis’ Coffyn. But——”’ 

“Thee will go, then, to-morrow?”’ 

He shut his lips tight and shook his head. 

“Why not?” 

“T don’t belong with them thar.” 

“Any boy who says ‘them thar’ certainly does 
belong with them. Pride is a very foolish thing.” 

His eyes stung. His anger spoke wildly. 

“Then Ill go away from hyar. [’ll live with 
Dicky Dicks. He won’t make me larn with the 
low-downs.” 

Lydia was astonished at this outbreak. Aston- 
ished at her own weakening before it. Could she let 
him go away—this boy who had saved Dencey’s 
life? 

Like an instinctive dog, he felt the break in her 
will. He began to plead. 

“Ef ye’ll let me go to the Coffin School, I’ll scrub 
the floors. I don’t mind. An’ I don’t never need to 
answer in class like them. I’ll jest set still in the 
back, and Dencey’ll let me say lessons to her 
evenin’s. I—I won’t belong ef they don’t want me. 
Couldn’t I scrub the floor ’stead 0’ old Noose? 
He’s an Indian.” 

In utter puzzlement, Lydia laid the matter be- 


A ROYAL SCHOOL 263 


fore Tom. “The boy was really dreadful. He’s never 
acted like that before. I—I thought he cared to live 
Here 

Tom laughed and kissed her. 

““There—there,” he said. “Thee’s not expected 
to understand boys, especially a young ruffian like 
that.” 

“But, Tom, he swore right before me. It’s not a 
laughing matter.”’ 

“T’ll deal with him,” said Tom. 

But the Captain soon got at the heart of the 
matter. 

“Bless his pride,” he said, coming back from the 
long talk with Jetsam. “The boy’s got grit. That’s 
all. He won’t learn from charity and he won’t be 
thrown with the low class of boys. I’m astonished, 
Lydia, that thee’d want him to go back and forth 
from them to our children.” 

When Aunt Lovesta heard of it, she had a fine 
plan. 

“T’ll adopt the boy,” she said, “and he can be 
called Coffyn. Then maybe they’ll let him in.” 

But here was another rock to wreck on. 

*T wunt be called Coffyn,” Jetsam asserted. 

“Why on earth not? Doesn’t thee like the 
name?” 

“Yes, oh, yes, hit’s the best name they is. But— 
that’s the reason.” 

“What reason?” 


33 


/ 


264. DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Jetsam blushed painfully. 

“T think now, young man, thee is acting foolish,” 
said Aunt Lovesta. 

Of course he was acting foolish. He knew it to 
the bottom of his heart. But how could he tell Mrs. 
Lovesta that he was going to marry Dencey and so 
must have a different name from hers? 

“What is the Indian woman’s name? You might 
take hers.” 

“Okorwaw. What kind of a name is that for a 
white man?” said Jetsam with dignity. (Imagine 
calling Dencey Mrs. Okorwaw!) 

Jetsam’s face grew wistful. 

“T wisht I had a name, I do so. I don’t belong 
to Indian Jill. She lies when she says it.”’ 

And Lovesta, in real pity for the boy, said noth- 
ing. 

In the end, it was arranged as Jetsam had 
planned it. He swept and scrubbed the floors at the 
Coffin School instead of Hed Noose who had long 
been too old for the job. He listened in class from 
the back of the room. 

Surely no royal university could out-royal the 
Coffin School. No Off-Islander could possibly know 
the seal of respectability it set upon its own. 
Founded by Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Bart., as a 
gift to his kin on the Island, it was to be attended 
only by true descendants of the original Tristram 
Coffin. A census had been taken, and five hundred 


A ROYAL SCHOOL 265 


of these privileged children had been found. When 
certain men of the General Court wished to omit 
Sir Isaac’s titles from the charter, the .baronet 
threatened to recall his gift. Therefore “Admiral 
Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancastrian School” was its 
name. . 

No wonder Injun Jill’s Jetsam could not be 
enrolled among its pupils. 

Jetsam always went out before the class was 
dismissed, and went home alone. He did not belong, 
but he learned as those who hunger and thirst after 
learning always do. 


CHAPTER XLI 


BEAUX! 


N ALMOST every Quaker household is to be 
| found one person who hungers for color— 
just physical bright color which Quakerism 
denies to its devotees. Dionis was such a per- 
son. As she came to be fourteen and fifteen years 
old, this longing for color was like starvation. The 
green of the grass in the spring seemed to rise 
upward—a shining emanation from the sward. 
Bright flowers drew her with a pull as of gravity 
itself. Love is said to be of the nature of identity. 
And no doubt there was bright color in Dencey’s 
soul. 

In all such color love there is the urging to 
deal with the color—to re-form it into some 
creation of one’s veritable own. Dionis’s creative- 
ness prompted her to strange activities. 

She took out again the bright colored shells her 
father had brought from the Pacific, made “flower 

266 


BEAUX! 267 


pieces” of them—the best that any of the school- 
girls made. But she disliked the “pieces” when 
finished and broke them up. 

She even tried to make a little human figure of 
the shells, using tiny black periwinkles for eyes 
and lined bits of scallop shells for fingers. Her 
imagining of this figure beforehand was a lovely 
youth. It turned out a decrepit old man and made 
her furious. Most of the girls at school longed for 
bright dresses, discussed them secretly. But Dionis 
had no wish that way. The thing was too intimate 
for “vain shows.” 

One day she brought in a huge armful of red 
flowery branches. She had climbed a tree to get 
them, an unheard-of performance for a girl of fif- 
teen. She decked her room with them as if for a wed- 
ding feast—mantelshelf, window frames, dresser, 
the head, the foot of the bed. Then she sat down in 
the midst of it. 

So Lydia found her. 

“Such extravagance, Dionis. I am ashamed of 
thee. And thy room covered with twigs. Take it 
down at once.” 

And, after much protest, Dionis did so. But when 
her mother burned them in the kitchen fire, she 
wept and stormed like a frightened child. 

“Thee’s turning them all gray, Mother,” she 
shouted. “They’re shriveling.” 

After such an outburst Dionis would be specially 


268 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


cross with Jetsam. To be sure, he was always pro- 
voking her, tweaking her hair, pulling at the yarn 
of her spinning wheel and tangling it, never leaving 
her alone. 

“Thee acts like a baby, Sam Jetsam,” she told 
him. ‘Why, even Ariel has got more sense than 
thee.” 

That summer, with the suddenness of a tide turn- 
ing, Dionis and Hopestill came to the age of beaux. 
Hopestill was six months younger. But she “had a 
beau” first—one beau—Ed Dewsbury. He would 
walk in the lanes with her and hold her hand. And 
once he even kissed her. 

“T think Ed Dewsbury’s the handsomest boy 
in the whole Coffin School,” she told Dionis. “ Did 
thee ever notice his shining locks?” 

“Shining bear’s grease,” said Dencey. “His 
hair’s just plastered with it. It smells up the whole 
schoolroom.”’ 

“Tt doesn’t, either. Anyway, that’s violet per- 
fume. Which boy does thee like best?” 

“T don’t like any of ’°em. Not a single one. They 
haven’t one of ’em got any sense. They’re just 
idiots, boys are.” 

Lydia, coming suddenly into the room, caught 
the last sentence. 

“Dionis, what a thing to say. Thee knows poor 
Billy Untold. He’s an idiot. I am sure none of our 
boys are like that.” 


BEAUX! 264 


“Well,” she conceded. “They don’t wiggle their 
mouths like him. But they are idiots, Mother— 
they never say a single thing that’s got any sense.” 

“Dencey, Dencey!” 

“T don’t care, Mother. I wouldn’t care if I 
didn’t see one of them for years and years and 
years.” 

Dionis actually thought this was true. She had 
no chance to find out whether she’d miss them or 
not. The boys saw to that. As to their “having 
sense,” Dionis’s judgment was not far from the 
truth. 

There were three boys in the running—perhaps 
even a fourth. Bob Merrill generally managed to 
walk home from school with her. 

He it was who offered her a “‘sentiment candy.” 

Dionis opened it, half expectation, half shyness, 
well knowing what would be inside. 

She unwrapped the tiny ribbon of paper from 
around the gumdrop and read aloud the printed 
couplet: 


*** However fair thou art, remember this, 
That grisly death must follow bliss.’” 


* But I'm not fair,” she objected. “I’m the black- 


est girl in school.” 
Bob snatched the candy back. “That’s not the 
one. That’s religious.” He popped that candy into 


270 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


his own mouth and gave her another. “That one’s 


for thee.” 
This revealed the time-worn lyric: 


“Roses are red and violets blue, 
Sugar’s sweet and so are you.” 


“Bob Merrill, I’m ashamed of thee,’’ Dionis 
declared. “I like the ‘grisly death’ one better. At 
least it’s true.” 

That night she asked her father if “grizzly” 
always meant a bear, and he gave the confusing 
reply that it did. 

“But why does thee ask?” 

“Oh, nothing, only Bob Merrill’s a bigger goose 
than I thought he was.”’ 

Bob Merrill, Richard Hold, or Zekiah Dunham 
always walked home with Dionis elbowing and 
tussling with each other for the privilege. But no 
one ever walked toward school with her but Jetsam. 

Bob Merrill tried to once, waiting outside the 
Coffyn gate until Jetsam and Dionis came out. 
There followed a quarrel, a struggle—nay, a knock- 
down fight. Lydia rushed out to find Jetsam sitting 
astride of Bob and pounding him with his fists. 

“‘Samuel—Samuel—get up—get.up at once. 
I am ashamed of thee, I am indeed.” 

Lydia had to use all her strength to separate 
them. She took Jetsam into the house. 


BEAUX! 271 


“What shall I do with thee? I thought thee was 
a gentleman now. Doesn’t thee know it’s wicked to 
fight?” 

“Tt ain’t wicked,” retorted Jetsam, his chest 
heaving with excited sobs. “He called me a no- 
name Kanaka and a half-breed. I’m not a Kanaka. 
I’m not a no-name.” 

“Tf thee’d taken the Coffyn name Lovesta 
offered, thee wouldn’t be,” reassured Lydia. 

“But I’m not. I’ve got a name, only I don’t 
know it.” 

“T hope so indeed,” said Lydia in sudden pity. 
“But thee mustn’t fight. No Friend must fight. 
It’s against Jesus.”’ 

“T allus fight. I’m not a Friend.” 

“Tsn’t thee my friend?” said Lydia with a faint 
attempt at humor. 

But the “no-name” taunt stayed in Jetsam’s 
mind, a wrong to brood over. He denied it in 
words, but he knew its truth. Coming home from 
his work in the cooper shop, milking the family 
cow, whenever he was lonely, the thing crossed 
him and hurt him. It matured him because it was 
no imagined sorrow. It meant trouble ahead. 

Somehow, he blamed the trouble on Jill, and the 
thing focused into more hatred of Jill. 

As to his courting, Jetsam had a little more sense 
than the other boys, but not much. It was Jetsam 
who scratched Dionis’s initials on his arm, and 


’ 


272 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


when they healed, Spartanly scratched them open 
again. At last his arm grew really sore, and Dionis 
told on him. 

After that he saved up his money and had his 
arm properly tattooed. 

“Now,” he said, proudly showing the inflamed 
art piece to his lady love. “Even if I’m lost on a 
South Pacific Island, they’ll know who I belong to.” 

“No, they won’t,” said Dencey the literal. ‘The 
Fijis can’t read.” 

“Maybe they won’t be Fijis, maybe they’ll be 
Tahitians.” 

To these sailor-bred young folk the Pacific islands 
were individualized. Fathers and uncles had all 
been there. Jetsam himself would be there in a 
year, two years, or three. All boys went to sea. 

Jetsam drew down his sleeve over the outspread 
bird and the letters— 


Dionis C 


“Maybe they won’t read me,” he said, grinning. 
“Maybe they’ll just eat me.” 

“Sam Jetsam, you horrid thing. How can thee 
even say it!” 


He was delighted that she shuddered. 


CHAPTER-XLIT 


THE HUSKING 


ITH the autumn came the usual corn 

\ V husking. A great company of young folk, 

both Quaker and from the North Church, 
were invited out to Starbuck’s Farm. 

A wonderful ride it was out from the cosey town 
into the wide dreaming mystery of the moors. The 
moon was about to rise over Quidnet, sending up a 
rosy blush into the sky like real dawn. The carts 
laden with young folk clattered along the rut-road. 
In all the hollows of the moors stole the drawn veils 
of mist which presently the moon touched to an 
unearthly shining. Sometimes the carts dipped 
into mists all shivery, sometimes mounted a rise 
from which they could see the visionary coast 
merging into the intense silver of the sea. 

Amid the noisy shouting, every once in a while 

273 


274. DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Jetsam heard Dencey’s laugh. It wasn’t loud, but 
gleeful, infectious as a baby’s. 

Now they came into the barn. Lanterns hung 
from the rafters. The floor was piled high with pale 
yellow corn-in-husks. Now the boys sat down in a 
row by the husks and at that, all the laugh and 
chatter of the girl voices ceased into silence. 

The husking was to begin. 

All of a sudden a loud shout, “Go! and every 
youth reached out lightning-quick. There was a 
tearing sound like a mighty wind—the golden ears 
flew in one direction and the husks in another. 
Such dust, such laughing and confusion. It was the 
joyfullest time in the whole world. The boy who 
got the red ear of corn was to kiss the prettiest 
girl; the boy who husked the most corn was to kiss 
his. sweetheart. 

Jetsam made a terrible resolve to husk most corn. 
Of course, if he got the red ear, he’d kiss Dencey 
anyhow. He didn’t care who thought Hopestill was 
the prettiest. Victory in the husking—that was his 
goal. Besides, he’d like to beat those Coffyns and 
Starbucks and Gardners who held themselves so 
much higher than he. 

A wild laugh went up, a deafening shout. Ed 
Dewsbury had got the red ear and was chasing 
Hopestill all about the place to kiss her. Of course, 
he caught her. The boys always did. And Hopestill 
blushed crimson at his sounding smack. 


THE HUSKING 275 


Then all turned back to the husking. 

But Jetsam had not stopped one moment. 

Bob Merrill, over there, had an awful pile of 
corn. Jetsam glanced through the dust. Yes, it was 
bigger than his. Suppose Bob Merrill kissed her— 
kissed Dencey. He’d knock him down. If not now, 
then to-morrow. He couldn’t stand it, if anybody 
else kissed her. 

Oh, the agony of haste—hurry—hurry, hurry. 
His arms ached and his shoulders. His hands stung. 
Most of them had given up now and were standing 
looking at Zeke Dunham, Bob Merrill, and Jet- 
sam. Jetsam had always been swift-handed. He 
could take a reef even now as quickly as any ripe 
sailor. 

There, Bob Merrill dropped out—stopped in 
utter exhaustion. Gracious, would Zeke Dunham 
kiss her? Never—never. It didn’t occur to Jetsam 
now that anybody would choose to kiss any girl 
save Dencey. 

On and on and on—such a dusty mad race! 

The girls crowded closer, clapping first for Zeke, 
then for Jetsam. Only a dozen husks left. Jetsam 
snatched them in a daze. Then three, two, one. 
The husking was over. The judges began counting 
the ears of corn. Bob’s pile, and Zeke’s, and Jet- 
sam’s. 

Jetsam stood wiping the perspiration off with 
his sleeve. He was a sight to be kissing Dencey 


276 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Coffyn. He was almost sure he had won. He was 
hilarious, exulting. 

“Sammie Jetsam won!” went the cry. “ Pick her 
out, Sam. Who’s thy sweetheart ?”’ 

(As if there were any doubt about that!) 

‘Catch her, Sam!” 

The barn rocked with shouting and laughter. 

Jetsam looked about for Dencey. There she was, 
over by the barn door. He ran toward her. Of 
course she’d dart out into the yard. But that would 
be all the better. 

All this flashed through Jetsam’s brain in the 
instant of his run. Then he reached her. 

She did not run away. Not at all. She stood there 
under the bright lantern; and as he caught her hand 
she looked at him—yjust looked quick into his eyes. 

Pride, fear, pleading, most of all virgin shrinking 
were in the look. It excluded him like a sudden 
ghost. 

Before Jetsam knew it, he had dropped her hand. 

“All right. I won’t,”’ he whispered. 

And he darted out into the moonlight of the 
yard. 


CHAPTER XLII 


THE HALF—-BREED 


Down deep in his heart he knew Dencey was 

right. He couldn’t kiss her like that before 
everybody, as if it were peeling potatoes. Ed Dews- 
bury had kissed Hopestill. But Dencey! He won- 
dered if he would ever dare kiss her at any time or 
at any place. 

But equally down deep in his heart Jetsam was 
angry, furiously angry and furiously hurt. She 
might have just kissed him, anyway. She knew 
what people would say. He knew also. How bitterly 
he knew. “That Jetsam boy of Injun Jill’s. Of 
course Dencey Coffyn wouldn’t let him kiss her. 
The boy himself had sense to see he couldn’t—a 
half-breed Indian with no name.”’ 

That’s what he was. Dencey believed that, and 
that was the reason she did not let him. Jetsam 
knew perfectly well this wasn’t so, yet it fed his 

277 


abo walked home in a veritable warfare. 


278 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


anger. It fed his pain. She might have saved him 
the humiliation. She hadn’t saved him. And he’d 
won the kiss in fair rules of the game. 

He came into the gate of the Coffyn home as 
miserable a human being as might be. 

He didn’t want to meet anybody. It was early 
yet, and the front windows of the house still 
lighted. He stole into the back door and through the 
dark kitchen to his room, where he threw himself 
fully dressed on the bed. 

He had lain there for perhaps a half hour, the 
slow shamed tears gathering in his eyes, which he 
exasperatedly rubbed away against the coverlet, 
when Captain and Mrs. Coffyn came into the 
kitchen. The candlelight flashed through the crack 
of his door ajar. | 

“T must turn over the yeast,” said Lydia. “You 
know it might produce spontaneous combustion.” 

“T wonder if that’s possible,” said Tom interest- 
edly. “Spontaneous combustion.” 

Jetsam could hear Lydia scraping up the corn- 
meal yeast from the table with a spoon. 

““Of course, we must be fair in the matter,” said 
Captain Coffyn, as if opening up some subject 


again. 
“Yes—yes, at least—that,”” answered Mrs. Cof- 
fyn thoughtfully. ‘ 


“But we must be fair to Dionis, too,” said the 
Captain. 


THE HALF-BREED 279 


At the word “Dionis,” Jetsam pricked up his ears. 

“T wouldn’t worry about Dencey,” Lydia was 
saying. “She doesn’t care the least for boys. Why, 
she calls them idiots.” 

“She cares for them, Lydia, or they wouldn’t be 
around her so much. And she cares for the boy Sam 
most of all. She never thinks of doing her lessons 
without him. They are together every evening. 
Suppose she should want to marry him?” 

“Well, Tom, he saved her life, remember that.” 

“Saving her life doesn’t give him the right to 
spoil it afterward.” Captain Coffyn’s voice rose 
with distinct severity. 

Jetsam was aware of a sudden thrust that made 
all the other wrongs as nothing. He lifted his face. 
There were no tears any more. He hardly noted 
‘Lydia’s answer. 

“But, oh, Tom, if thee had been here when it 
happened. If it hadn’t been for Samuel, we wouldn’t 
have any daughter to marry or give in marriage.” 

“There isn’t a young fellow in Nantucket fit for 
Dencey, anyway—not one,” said the proud father. 
“And this boy. Of course, he’s bright and all that, 
but—but—why, he may be an Indian half-breed. 
He’s certainly ill-born. Think of the bad inheritance 
he’d bring into the family—drunkenness, vile 
temper, and worse. Impossible! Can’t thee see? 
—it’s impossible.” 

“He is a good lad,” said Lydia softly. 


280 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


But Jetsam did not hear her say it. He had wildly 
stopped his ears and hid his face. His whole mind 
was in a tumult of hurt—the fresh, poignant suffer- 
ing of the young, who don’t know what to do with 
that terrific stranger. 

They didn’t want him here, the Coffyns, here in 
this beautiful house. How ek he ever have 
imagined they would? They were afraid of him as if 
he might touch them with disease. 

They were especially afraid for Dencey. No 
wonder Dencey wouldn’t kiss him. She, too, was 
afraid. She was thinking of his hidden disgrace. 

He was the son of Injun Jill. 

Jetsam was wrecked on unexpected rocks. What 
should he do, where turn? He mustn’t stay here if — 
they didn’t want him. Must he go back to Injun 
jill? 

“No!” he said aloud and beat his fist on the bed. 
Then he looked, terrified, at the door. But the 
crack was black. They had gone. Oh, they must 
never know that he was here and had listened to 
them. For the first time it dawned on Jetsam that 
eavesdropping was an ungentlemanly thing. 

Now he could not tell them he was going away. 
Then they’d know he had heard. It would shame 
Captain Coffyn, it would shame Mrs. Coffyn. 
She might try to explain. Oh, never, never, never! 
All his boy-shyness was in revolt against the scene. 
He couldn’t plan. He couldn’t think except to re- 


THE HALF-BREED 281 


peat Captain Coffyn’s sentences, which seemed to 
burn shame into him. (“A half-breed. Drunkenness 
and worse.”’) Oh, he must go away! 

He thought of Dicky Dicks’s. Should he go there? 
The rough surroundings—smell of stale liquor, the 
coarse things he knew were going on. Jetsam turn: | 
from Dicky Dicks’s with loathing. 

And of course the thought of the sea—that first 
refuge for the Nantucket boy. Jetsam knew sea life 
as well as though he had lived it. He knew its cruel- 
ties and he knew its vast adventure. He was surely 
going some day, no Nantucket youth dreamed of 
anything else: but he wanted to go with the right 
sort of captain. Four years with the wrong captain 
meant tragedy. The barque Demeter was sailing 
next week with the cruelest captain on the Island. 
He wouldn’t go in her. 

He’d get a little room down by the docks. He 
could pay for it with his wages at the cooper shop. 
But what would he tell Mrs. Coffyn about his 
going? If he went away, she’d guess why. 

Jetsam found himself at an impasse. A grown 
man would have flung out of it and let the Coffyns 
guess what they would. Jetsam was sixteen—at 
least (no one knew his age) he seemed about that. 

Sixteen in boy or girl is delicate and shrinking 
as a wild-wood creature—intensely and jealously 
alone. 


CHAPTER XLIV 


A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE 


ETSAM stayed. Stayed. through a refined 
J torture in the Coffyn home. 

He ate his meals in silence and kept away 
other times. He utterly refused to sit with Dencey 
in the evening learning lessons. He spent long hours 
in his room, longer hours out of the house, where, 
the Coffyns did not know. 

Dencey missed him dreadfully. Of course, she 
was too proud to let him know it. That Jetsam 
should be so offended about the matter of the kiss 
seemed to her utterly unfair. He acted as if it were 
his right to kiss her and she had deprived him of a 
right. No boy had a right to kiss her and no pe 
ever should. It was silly. 

Sometimes the distress in his eyes touched her. 

“T can’t get that sum in fractions, Jetsam,” she 
ventured shyly. ‘““Won’t thee help me?” 

282 


A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE 283 


And so he helped her. He sat with her on the 
bench by the fire, holding the book at arm’s length. 
He explained all the ins and outs of it with care, 
and wrote the figures. 

“You understand it now, don’t you?” he asked. 
And rose without waiting for answer. The formality 
of the whole performance was almost an insult. 
As he left the room, Dencey’s eyes stung with 
tears. 

Lydia would stop him in the hallway asking him 
not to go out. Poor Lydia was accustomed to have 
people return coldness for her kindnesses. She 
seemed to be made that way. She blamed herself. 

Tom thought the boy had got into bad company. 

As to Jetsam, all his brooding followed two paths 
—a hatred of Injun Jill and a gloomy consciousness 
of sin. 

That look of Dencey’s there under the lighted 
lantern had revealed—among so many things it 
told him—an abyss of purity that he had never 
dreamed of. 

Dencey was stainless, innocent of all the filthy 
things he knew. Innocent of matters he had touched 
and handled, not knowing how filthy they were. 
There at Injun Jill’s—the foul oaths she had flung 
at him—the oaths he had flung back. At Dicky 
Dicks’s the stories he had heard and laughed at, 
though he had always liked best the tales of breath- 
less escapes and adventures. All these were re- 


284. DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


vealed to him now in horror. No wonder Dencey 
wouldn’t have him. He was black, black, black. 

He walked alone in the wind of the Commons, 
the wind cutting his face as these thoughts cut his 
heart. 

He believed in God. Practically everybody did 
then. But in the Coffyn household, God had 
gradually loomed up to Jetsam a very real Person. 
Kind to them, but distant and awful to himself. 
He began to fear God and hell. 

And all this dire change in his life was due to 
Injun Jill. Unreasonably he thought that. His 
hatred of her grew and grew until he could actually 
taste it in his mouth. 

One day, tramping on the Commons, he met her 
face to face. 

He made the first onslaught. 

“You, Jill Okorwaw,’’ he shouted. “What ye 
mean, callin’ me yer son? I hain’t, I tell ye. I hain’t 
yer son. Ye hear?” 

Jill stared, dazed, as if at first she did not know 
him. Then her sleepy Indian look changed to the 
Indian glare. She had only those two expressions. 

“Yes—ye air my soon,” she yelled back. “ Al] 
mine.” 

“T hain’t neither, an’ ye’ve got to stop sayin’ it. 
I don’t belong to ye.” Jetsam stamped on the 
ground. “I never did. Not noways.”’ His old rough 
speech returned to his tongue. “I was shipwrecked. 


A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE 28s 


An’ ye know about it an’ ye won’t tell. Ye’ve got 
to tell me, darn ye!” 

“T tellth,” she nodded her head. “Ye b’long me. 
Al—ways!” She chuckled. She was three parts 
drunk and smelt horrible. “First day ye coom, ye 
crawlth away, quick. Get away fro’ Indion Jeel. But 
I ketch, an’ hol’ tight—my baby.” 

It was the first break Injun Jill had ever made. 
It gave Jetsam a wild ray of hope. 

“Thar,” he cried. “I told ye. I’m not yourn. A 
baby couldn’t crawl the first day it come. No baby 
could.”’ He laughed suddenly. 

“Ye air mine, too. I hol’ ye so.” Jill crooked her 
two arms as if the baby were within them. She held 
it close against her breast. 

To children—and Jetsam had yet the child in 
him—the mother relationship is intense. No think- 
ing mitigates it. It is all emotion. 

That gesture revolted Jetsam—that he should 
have been like that with Injun Jill 

“JT hain’t, I hain’t,” he cried out chokingly. 
“Ye’re a old foul Injun hag. Ye’re dirty an’ drunk 
and 4 

Jill’s clumsy tenderness changed to her Indian 
glare. She darted forward and struck Jetsam, 
aiming at his head but hitting his shoulder. And in 
a flash he struck her back, a terrible blow on the 
cheek. 

She grunted with pain. 


286 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Instantly, as he struck her, he seemed to have 
an instinctive sense that she was his mother. He 
had struck his mother! 

He turned and ran in mortal fear. Ran out into | 
the lonely sheep pastures. | 

Yes, he was Jill’s son. He showed it. Hadn’t he 
sworn and blasphemed like her, hadn’t he struck 
her—a woman? Yes, he was low and ill-born. Just 
Jill’s. That was all. 

He felt a thousand leagues away from the dear 
Coffyn household and atmosphere. An absolute 
_ stranger. 


CHAPLIER XLV 


THE FRIENDLY DICKY DICKS 


UT as he trudged back to town Jetsam 
B began to think more reasonably. 

Jill had made a break—that was sure. 
If he hadn’t been so wild and lost his temper, he 
might have led her on to say more. To say some- 
thing that would really assure him that he was not 
hers. 

Oh, how he hated her! 

He could ask Dicky Dicks. Perhaps he would re- 
member about it. Injun jill was so unimportant 
and lived so far out that nobody noted one way or 
another about her baby. There was the wreck of the 
British Queen long ago. And there was the rumor, 
chiefly recounted by Nantucket children for its 
romantic flavor, that Jetsam had been taken off 
that wreck. The Fragment boys had dubbed him 
Jetsam for that reason. 

Yes, he would ask Dicky Dicks. 


287 


288 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


He found his way down to the ill-odored grog | 
shop which he had kept aloof from so many months. 
Dicky was inclined to be hurt. 

“?Shamed of yer old friends, hain’t ye?” he 
queried. “Now the Tom Coffyns have taken ye 
up.” 

“T’m not ashamed of you, Dicks,” said Jetsam, 
and realized that it was true. The Coffyns were 
ashamed of him, but he wasn’t of Dicks, who had 
been good to him. 

Dicks could see that the boy was in trouble and 
soon softened. 

They sat down by the fire. The customers were 
gone. Then, trembling for the reply he might get, 
Jetsam asked his question. 

“No, I don’t reckon ye’re Jill’s kid,’’ answered 
Dicks. “But ye hain’t no better off ef ye hain’t. 
*Cause then ye’re Bill’s.”’ 

Bill was the man who had lived with Jill in Jet- 
sam’s earliest childhood. Then he had gone to sea. 

“Bill,” repeated Jetsam miserably. 

“Yes, I reklect the hull thing. Bill was wrecked 
on the British Queen. Everybody was so busy sal- 
vigin’ wreckage, they didn’t notice about him 
much. But he come trampin’ across the Common in 
the middle o’ the night to Jill’s door with ye, a mite 
of a baby, in his arms. Ye can’t tell me that Bill 
would ’a’ saved ye ef ye hadn’t ben his’n. Besides, 
he said ye wus his. When he fust come and folks 


THE FRIENDLY DICKY DICKS 285 


down hyar tried to git ’im to tell about the wreck, 
he’d never talk. He allus looked skeered. He said 
yer ma died at sea ’cause of the storm, and he brung 
ye with him. Then he’d allus add about ye bein’ 
precious to ‘im. Hit never sounded real, that part 
didn’t.” 

“T should think not,”’ said Jetsam. “I remember 
his beatings. I was little, but I remember ’em.” 

“But I don’t see why he should claim ye ef ye 
wasn’t his’n. Ye wasn’t much to look at.” 

“But why should Jill claim me, too?”’ said Jet- 
sam. 

He sat staring at the fire. There seemed no way 
out. He was the hated brat of somebody, any way 
he made it. Reckon Captain Coffyn was right about 
his inheriting bad tendencies. And he still hated 
Injun Jill. Bill had been forgotten. But Jill kept up 
her claim on him. He thoughtfully felt his nose. 
Yes, his nose was like Injun Jill’s—aquiline like 
hers. 

Just then a crew of sailors came in from a coast- 
wise schooner. They crowded around the bar 
clamoring for drink and Dicks hurried to wait on 
them. Jetsam lent Dicks a hand in the work. Why 
shouldn’t he come and stay here with Dicks? Dicks 
liked him. Perhaps if Jetsam helped him this way, 
Dicks would keep him for nothing. The men were 
jolly. 

They all sat down on the benches, drinking and 


290 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


talking. Then singing, as the drink mounted to 
their heads. Jetsam lingered as he used to do in the 
old time. Didn’t he belong here, anyway? The 
Coffyns didn’t want him. Dicks gave him a drink. 

If Tom Coffyn had seen him now, his belief as to 
the bad company would have been verified. 

The men grew rougher, quarrelsome. An old 
sailor started up a chanty, one of the vilest on the 
coast where many a chanty was vile. Jetsam lis- 
tened to the verses. He used to know it by heart, he 
used tc laugh at it. But in the midst of one verse, 
especially coarse, Dencey’s pure virgin look stole 
across his brain like a veil. 

He stumbled up from his seat, knocking over his 
chair. He fairly fled into the street. Into the cold, 
breathable air. He felt as though he had been wal- 
lowing in mud. 


CHAPTER XLVI 


THE SPRINGTIDE OF THE SPIRIT 


"N THAT winter, amid snow and ice, a strange 
“springtime” dawned over Nantucket. Such 

' “springs’’ were not uncommon in New Eng- 
land villages. They might come at any season. 

They were called ‘“ Revivals.” 

They were not prepared for or invited save in 
ihe continual invitation of the earnest spirit which 
was an integral part of New England life. 

There was no invited preacher, no multiplying of 
church services with impassioned pleas to come to 
the mourner’s bench, no artificial “Revival” such 
as is known to-day. 

The thing just happened. As though on a fertile 
field a warmth had stolen over, and in response the 
life, stored and fostered there, sprang up. First a 
tender green leaf in a corner, then a sudden flower 
somewhere else, then flowers more and more, until 
the field was white to the harvest. 


291 


292 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


Then the whole little community tucked away 
among New England hills, or islanded in the sea, 
cut off from the outside world, rocked with news. 
Important news! News of the Spirit. 

Such a springtime came now over the Quakers of 
Nantucket. Nobody expected it. Life had been 
going on rather dully for some months. 

Then, suddenly, Martha White was “tendered 
to the Lord.” 

All those years since the death of her husband 
and son, Martha White had been in rebellion. She 
had been poor and kept a shop in Petticoat Lane, 
where she served her customers in grim silence, or 
with a frown and cutting speech. Lately she had 
been, if possible, more silent and withdrawn. 

Then, one morning in First Day meeting, when 
they had been sitting silent for almost an hour, the 
vaporing breaths of the worshipers ascending 
sacrificially in the bitter cold air, Martha rose and 
spoke. | 

Her voice was like a sudden bell. A sweet clangor 
in it never heard before. The whole meeting quiv- 
ered as if swept by a motion of wind. 

“The Lord has called me,” rang the sweet un- 
known voice. “He has called me from rebellion and 
a bitter battle in myself. He has called me from 
Hate into His Way of Peace. Blessed, Blessed art 
Thou, Dear Lord, dear beyond all.” 

Her voice grew not louder but softer as she thus 


SPRINGTIDE OF THE SPIRIT 293 


spoke to her God, as though He were too near for 
loud speech. It trembled with utter tenderness. 

“Thou hast given back my dear ones who were 
gone. Thou hast given them to my love and my 
faith. I will wait, Lord. All my life waits upon Thee. 
O Lord, my help and my shield.” 

Then she sat down. 

The silence trembled for a moment, Then Lydia 
arose and began the Forty-seventh Psalm. Lydia 
always said the Psalms as though they were her 
own, given her fresh and warm from God. 

“Oh, clap your hands, all ye people.’”” When she 
came to the phrase, “God is gone up with a shout, 
the Lord with the sound of a trumpet,” one seemed 
to see the shouting joyousness of God, hastening to 
the one sinner that had repented. 

“Then the watery cloud overshadowing their 
minds broke into a sweet abounding shower of 
celestial rain and the greatest part of the meeting 
was broken together, dissolved and comforted in 
the same divine and holy Presence.” 

Such was the Quaker meeting when the Presence 
of the Lord was upon it. 

The folk went home in little excited groups telling 
the news. 

(And we call the New England village dull and 
colorless.) 

The next First Day, who but big Stephen should 
be touched with the divine fire. Then three young 


294 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


girls who lived on State Street. Then Mary Beck, 
the seamstress, and Hedassah Gardner and several 
young men home from a voyage around the Horn. 
Then people up in the North Congregationalist 
Church began to get religion. 

And then Sammie Jetsam was swept into the 
spiritual tide. 

Of course he had been at the Quaker meetings. 
No one of the Coffyn household dared absent him- 
self from them. He had heard Martha White with 
astonishment and fear. He had heard Stephen with 
envy. And the multiplying of the others with grow- 
ing faith. © 

The whole town was full of the excitement. 
Lovers discussed it in the lanes, women in their 
kitchens, shipowners in their office, and the cooper 
at his work. God was not only present, He was 
fashionable. 

Jetsam’s mind swung away from his personal 
wrongs. He began to grope and seek. To Dencey, 
he was more distant than ever. He noted none of 
her timid advances, he who once had been so eager 
to meet them. He walked alone in the Commons, 
hour long in that spiritual wrestling which has been 
the experience of all seekers after truth. He tried to 
find Christ Who, they said, had died for him; he 
tried to get, if only a touch of the garment hem of 
that peace which he saw shining in the face of 
Lydia, and now in Stephen’s face, and in the 


SPRINGTIDE OF THE SPIRIT 20s 


homely, ignorant little face of the seamstress, Mary 
Beck. 

All to no avail. He was outside, a black sheep 
crying in the darkness. Why was it? Why couldn’t 
he be like those others? What was keeping him 
back? 

It was a misty day, a February thaw, and no 
snow lying. The fog rolled in broken clouds over 
the Commons and the whole place seemed asleep. 

There, across a dim slope, stood Jill’s hut. 

When he saw it, Jetsam’s whole mind lifted in a 
veritable shock of hate. Injun Jill pretending to be 
his mother, making him a half-breed, keeping him 
from everything that was sweet in life! Then, 
across the confusion of this, almost like a speaking 
voice, came the words that Lydia had read aloud 
that morning. 

“He that hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye 
know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding 
in him.” 

His hatred of Injun Jill. That was it. He could 
never have God until he gave up that. Why, even 
now it had shattered all his spiritual longing, filled 
all his heart with black ink. 

“But I can’t give that up,” he said fiercely under 
his breath. “I’ve hated her always, always. Why, I 
can’t remember not hating her. It wouldn’t be 


” 
me. 
All right, then,” said his conscience, now sud- 


296 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


denly alive and able to speak aloud. “You love 
your hate of Jill better than you do Jesus, your 
Saviour. It’s a strange choice.” 

“Tt isn’t a choice. I can’t 

“Thou must.” 

Hesitatingly he turned around and began to walk 
draggingly toward Jill’s hut. He hadn’t any ideas 
about it, no willingness, no kindness. His face there 
on the lonely moor was wan and pitiful. 

Then, all of a sudden, the thing happened. 

The hate died out of him like an old, old pain. It 
left him free, wholesome—well. A wonderful health 
he had never known before. He stopped stock 
still in the path, his mind going deeper and deeper 
into the Unseen. Curtains were lifted, softly, deli- 
cately, deliberately, and beyond each was a greater 
brightness—a greater joy. 

Gradually he knew that something was required 
of him. He must do something. Merely not hating 
wasn’t enough. Quite willingly he started forward 
again, and, all at once, was at Jill’s door. 

He pushed it open. 

Jill, wrapped in a blanket, sat crouched over a 
tiny fire. By some singular chance, she was not 
drunk. He walked over and touched her shoulder. 

“Tnjun Jill, ’'ve—I’ve come to see you.” 

She sprang up, fending her head with both arms 
—a whine almost like a cat. 

A wave of pity engulfed him. 


99 


SPRINGTIDE OF THE SPIRIT 297 


“T won’t hurt you, Jill,” he said. “I’ll never hit 
you again. Oh, don’t be afraid.” 

But Jill was afraid. Soberness always took all 
the courage out of Jill, and all her strength. She 
backed against the wall muttering. 

“Ye’re foolin’. Yell boolst me out my house.” 

Jetsam was taller than she now by a head. He 
hadn’t noticed it the other day. 

“Please don’t be afraid,” he said again, his voice 
breaking. And after the pity flowed a stream of 
love. The poor, miserable, lonely thing! There were 
almost no Indians left now in the Island. Why, Jill 
was as alone in the world as he. He saw her in an 
utterly new aspect. 

“You can”—he gulped a little at the difficult 
word, then went on—‘‘you can be my mother if 
you want to, Jill. I won’t cross you.” 

She looked up at him with a queer passion in her 
eyes. 

“Ye air my baby,” she cried. “ Al—ways. B’long 
no Coffyns. B’long me.” 

“Yes, Jill,” he said quickly. “I belong to ye. 
I’ll get ye some wood. The fire’s near out.” 

He went out to the wood-shed. There, as he 
picked up the ax, came a scramble and a yelp, and 
Wash leaped upon him, dragging a rope. Jill had 
evidently tied him to keep him from running away 
to Jetsam. 

Jetsam untied him while Wash went wild with 


298 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


joy. When Jetsam came in with the wood, the dog 
was barking, leaping in circles about him. 

He built up the fire and filled the poor hut with 
light and warmth. He opened one window a little 
to let out the foul air. He seemed to be making the 
whole place alive. 

Jill crouched again by the fire, her face gone into 
that sleepy stupidity which degenerate Indians had. 

It was while Jetsam was sweeping the floor (with 
the old wreck of a broom) that a new “leading” 
came to him. 

He must stay here with Injun Jill. He must leave 
the Coffyns and come out here to live with her. 

He began to struggle against this. It seemed too 
much even for the Lord Jesus to ask. But Jetsam 
did not struggle long. Truly, he was in the hands 
of the Lord. 

He shook Jill gently to rouse her. “I’m goin’ 
to town,” he said, “to git you some bread and meat. 
Ill come again. I’m goin’ to stay with you now.” 

He thought he saw happiness in the leathery old 
face for a moment. 

As he walked toward town, he noticed with 
wonder that every dry bush, every stalk of old aster 
or laurel, had rainbow lights about it. He rubbed 
his eyes and looked again. But the rainbows re- 
mained and kept with him all the way. 


CHAPTER XLVII 


JETSAM FINDS THE CLUE 


EXT morning, Lydia, hurrying upstairs to 
N some household duty, found herself stopped 
at the newel post by Jetsam. 

“Samuel, where was thee all last night?” she 
asked anxiously. “Thee mustn’t stay out like that. 
Captain Coffyn was quite angry.” 

“T was with Injun Jill,” he faltered. ‘Mis’ 
Coffyn, I’m going to stay with her.” 

“With Injun Jill? Why, surely—but thee can’t 
be offended. What have we done? Thee mustn’t go 
there, Samuel.” 

“Yes,”’ he answered, “I must. The Lord, He 
told me to. Oh, Mis’ Coffyn,” he broke out sud- 
denly. “The Lord came to me yesterday. He filled 
me with light—all of me with light.” 

His eyes became intensely blue, then swam with 
tears. 

299 


300 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Oh, Mis’ Coffyn, I didn’t know how good He 
was!” he said childishly. 

Lydia was silent for an instant in sheer surprise 
of joy. She clapped her hands soundlessly. 

“Samuel, Samuel, my dear, dear lad. Oh, I am 
so happy for thee. Oh, the Lord be praised.” 

If one of her own had come into the fold, Lydia 
could not have shown more gladness. She laid her 
hands over his upon the newel post, looking into his 
eyes. Jetsam had a rare glimpse of what a real 
mother might be. 

Tom came through the hall. 

“Tom, Tom,” she called excitedly. “Samuel is 
saved. The Lord came to him yesterday.” 

Jetsam, as he faced the Captain, was fairly blink- 
ing with embarrassment. But there was no mis- 
taking the blessing in the boyish eyes. Tom’s anger 
and suspicion faded. 

“That’s splendid, my boy,” he said, shaking 
hands with him. “Thee’ll never be sorry for this 
step.” 

“Tt wasn’t my step, sir,” said Jetsam. “The Lord 
did the stepping.” 

Tom laughed but Lydia was a little shocked. 

They brought him into the keeping room. They 
were all there at the morning redding-up. How they 
gathered around him! Peggy threw her arms about 
him and didn’t seem to mind when he wriggled 
away. Little Ariel clung to his hand, though he 


JETSAM FINDS THE CLUE 301 


didn’t the least know what had happened. Jane 
said her demure congratulations. 

Dionis came running downstairs with the dust 
cloth. She was the shyest of all. 

“’m glad, Jetsam,” she said, and then stood 
over by the settle watching him, mystified and wist- 
ful. 

Stephen put both hands on his shoulders in 
brotherly fashion. 

“Thee’ll be a Friend now,” he said. 

“Of course he will,” announced Lydia. “Tom, 
thee’ll vouch for him in meeting, won’t thee, and 
I'l] talk with Eliakim and Jonathan Folger. They’re 
on the committee. I’m sure they'll accept thee, 
Samuel. But thee must answer all their questions 
straight and true, no matter what they ask.” 

It was as gay as a wedding. 

As he looked about at the beaming faces, Jetsam 
suddenly realized a new oneness with them. He had 
tried to enter that circle without the love of God. 
He could not, for the whole fabric of the family life 
was founded on that, and without it was no con- 
tact. 

Now he had the clue. 

At first there was a great clamor against Jetsam’s 
going out to live with Injun Jill. Peggy called it a 
“cryin’ shame for a Christian boy to be livin’ with 
that heathen.’ Jane was shocked. Captain Coffyn 
told him that he was sure it was unnecessary. 


302 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“Thee’ll find it hard, my son,” he said, “after 
living here so long.” 

“Tt don’t seem right for me to say no to you, 
Captain,’ answered Jetsam. ‘But I’ve got to go.” 

But he was greatly pleased to be asked. Had even 
the Captain changed his mind about him? 

Only Lydia approved of the going. “It’s the price 
of his peace,” said Lydia. “Little enough to do for 
so great reward.” 

All at last grew resigned to it except Dionis. 

“Tt isn’t a fit place for thee, Jetsam. Thee knows 
it isn’t. I don’t believe she’s thy mother. Why, she 
might kill thee in the night some time when she’s 
drunk.” | 

“She couldn’t kill me,’’ he answered, warming his 
hope at her solicitude. “Why, I’m twice as strong 
as she is.” 

“Tt’s horrid out there. I don’t want thee to go.” 

Oh, delightful this! Jetsam wished that Jill would 
indeed hurt him. What might not Dencey do then? 
Why, she might His whole mind thrilled sud- 
denly at the possibility. He reached out his hand, 
touching hers on the book, but she immediately 
drew it away. 

It was Dencey who told Lydia about the dirty 
thin blanket he had and no bed out in Jill’s hut. 
“He told me about it long ago.” she said, and in- 
sisted on giving him all those from the bed in Jet- 
sam’s room. “They’re his, anyway,” she declared. 


JETSAM FINDS THE CLUE 303 


Ah, more than the blankets warmed him as he 
bore them away. 

Lydia, seeing Dencey look out from the window 
as Jetsam disappeared in the darkness, quoted 
softly: 

“* All things work together for good in them that 
love God.’” Lydia had the Quaker willingness to 
follow adventure to the very end. 

Not so Tom Coffyn. He viewed these develop- 
ments in another light. 

“This Injun Jill martyrdom has got to stop,” 
he told his wife. “ And I’m going to see that it does. 
The boy shall go to sea.” 

“Thee’ll see that he sails with a good master?” 
asked Lydia anxiously. 

“Yes, I’ll manage that. But he must go.” 


CHAPTER XLVIII 


THE CHINESE BIRD CAGE 


IKE many martyrdoms, the living with Injun 
Jill was not so hard in actuality as it had 
been in contemplation. 

Jetsam still went to the Coffin School, doing 
chores and learning. He still worked at the cooper 
shop. Happiest of all, he resumed his evening study 
with Dencey. Then, too, he was now a member of 
the Meeting. That gave him rights and dignities in 
the town. He had given his “testimony,” frightened 
at first, then suddenly glowing with the memory 
of his experience, so that he spoke well. The elders 
praised him. 

After all this, it was not so hard to trudge out 
over the snowy dark Commons to Jill’s cottage. 
He kept the hut clean, and his earnings gave them 
sufficient food. Only gradually did Jill seem to be- 

304 


THE CHINESE BIRD CAGE 305 


lieve the change in her life. She began to work 
hard at her loom. 

“No use Coffyn planket,” she grunted. “Jeel 
make planket. My poy, my planket.” 

“All right, Jill,” he said indulgently. “Only I’ll 
have to use the Coffyn blankets until thee gets it 
done. Thee doesn’t want me to freeze.”’ 

She was like a child now, and he the adult of the 
house. 

Yes, all that was easy. But the thinking of Jill 
as his mother—that he found as bitter as ever. It 
cut him off from Dencey. That wrong was always 
fresh. 

“A half-breed, a half-breed,’’ he would repeat 
monotonously, as he flung along the lonely path to 
the cottage. “I can’t be that, and I won’t be!” 

He tried to comfort himself with the cruel Bill. 
He at least was white. But he and Dicky Dicks’s 
memory of him were vague. Jill was present. After 
all, Jill had been drunk when she said that about his 
being a crawling baby. It didn’t solve his problem. 

Jetsam bought a mirror at a sailor-shop and 
hung it in Jill’s house. It was a source of unending 
amusement to Jill, who would stand in front of it 
making faces at herself. Jetsam, too, made faces into 
the mirror. But they were long faces. He studied his 
face, feature by feature. 

Lordy (Oh, he mustn’t say that now that he was 
a Quaker)—but, Lordy, he was homely. Those high 


306 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


cheek bones! Indians always had ’em—and the 
nose. It was all right to call it aquiline, but it was 
like Injun Jill’s. And he was always so white. He 
thought of Dencey’s brunette cheeks, not rosy on 
the surface, but glowing from within. Her eyes so 
limpid clear which always laughed first before her 
mouth did. Oh, he wasn’t fit to tie her shoe-strings. 
But he wished he could tie them. He did so! When 
he was away from her, he always knew he wasn’t fit 
even to talk to her. When he was with her, he was 
constantly edging and hedging toward love-making. 

One day he came into the house with a present 
for Dencey, the first he had ever given her. He 
had bought it from a young sailor who had carried 
it all the way from Canton. Jetsam was trembling a 
little as he brought it in. It was a bird cage intri- 
cately carved of teak wood. Chinese flowers, delicate 
willow trees, two lovers walking in a garden—all 
were there in the lace-like structure. And inside it 
were six beautiful little living birds. 

Such unbelievable things wandered into Nan- 
tucket harbor. 

“Dencey,” he called excitedly. “ Dencey.”’ 

She came running into the keeping room. 

“Please take it,” he pleaded, holding it toward 
her. “‘ Please do.” | 

Her eyes lighted upon the lovely thing, and her 
whole face bloomed with delight. 

“Oh!” she said. “Oh——-” Then her two arms 


THE CHINESE BIRD CAGE 307 


went around it in an embrace. The tiny birds 
fluttered in terror, and she withdrew her arms but 
her eyes still loved it. 

“Tt’s the most beautiful thing in the whole 
world,” she said. “How did thee know to find it 
for me?” 

“T always know what thee likes,’ 
soberly watching her. 

“Oh, look at the red one,” she cried, gazing at the 
birds. “ And the blue one, and the one with the gold- 
tipped wings. Oh, Jetsam, how pretty!” 

This love poured so lavishly upon the birds made 
him jealous. 

“T wish thee wouldn’t call me Jetsam,” he said 
crossly. 

“Why?” she asked. 

“°’Cause it isn’t a name. A dog could be called 
Jetsam.” 

Dencey drew her fascinated eyes from the cage 
in her first recognition of him. 

“That’s so,” she said. “It’s not a nice name and 
I won’t call thee it again. Not even when I think of 
thee: 

“‘Oh—does thee think of me?” 

“Of course I do, Sam Jetsam. (Oh, there I said 
it!) I think of Ariel and Mother and Father, every- 
bod vs 

“That’s not what I mean, Dencey.” 

“Tt’s what I mean,” she maintained. 


’ 


said Jetsam, 


308 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


“T wish I had a name. I do so.” He spoke with 
abrupt unhappiness. “Like Bob Merrill or Blake 
Folger. I haven’t got any—either first name or 
last.” 

She was instantly solicitous. 

“Thee’s got to have a name. Sam is a good 
Christian name. And what was Bill’s name? That 
man that brought thee from the wreck?” 

“T don’t know. He was just Bill. He was a cruel 
man. I remember yet how he beat me till I couldn’t 
stand up. I had to crawl away after it.” 

Dencey’s eyes filled. These pictures of Sam’s 
childhood were intense as anything she knew. And 
they hurt her. 

“T’ll tell thee,’ she said. “Bill found thee in 
the water, didn’t he? Even if thee was his son he had 
to find thee there. Thee could be Samuel Seaman. 
T’ll call thee that, and I’ll make everybody else call 
thee that, too.” 

Jetsam studied it, his lips moving in a visible 
whisper. 

“Dionis Seaman. Dencey Seaman.” Yes, it was 
a good name. 

“Sam Jetsam, how dares thee!’she cried, step- 
ping away from him as startled as the birds had 
been. 

Yes, she was always like that. She would cham- 
pion him and plan for him. But she wouldn’t 
let him touch her, not even a little finger. 


CHAPTER XLIX 


OFF TO SEA 


HEN, suddenly, like the purposeful filling of 
a sail, came the greatest event of Jetsam’s 
life. 

He was going to sea. 

It was providential, so Tom Coffyn thought. 
Perhaps he himself was part of the Providence. 

One evening, Caleb Severance (Lydia’s brother) 
came in to talk with Tom. Caleb was sailing next 
week as captain of the Sextant, and had been busy 
all day with loading the lighters for his ship. The 
family were about the fire, and the two captains 
sat in the circle discussing their business, when 
Caleb said: 

“Well, some sea-struck youth’s going to have a 
chance to go to sea. Mary Swain, at the last mo- 
ment, has bribed her boy not to go. He was too 

309 


310 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


young anyway—only fourteen. Hasn’t thee got 
some youngster here that would like to be my 
cabin boy?” 

Elkanah was down-town on an errand, or he 
would inevitably have spoken. Jetsam, who was 
sitting by Dencey on the settle, looked up at the 
summons. He hesitated. It was no small thing to 
interrupt two captains in their talk. But at that 
instant Tom also looked up. Their glances met. 

“Would thee like to go, young man?” spoke 
Tom. 

“Oh, Captain, it’s the chance I’ve been hoping 
for,” said Jetsam. 

Then what excited busy-ness in the Coffyn house- 
hold. Lydia asserted that he should buy nothing 
from the sailor’s slop chest. He should have all 
from her hands as any son would in starting from 
home. There were the warm flannel underthings to 
be made, blankets to select from her press, and the 
few home remedies for cholera and such troubles. 
Dencey knitted like mad on mittens for him, and 
Martha White, who had learned tailoring, made 
the sailor suits. 

Jetsam was made a man overnight by his sense of 
getting started at last. Samuel Seaman, cabin boy, 
did not look like much on the ship’s log. But every 
youth, poor or rich, had to start at the bottom. The 
business of whaling was to be learned. And the 
whale was no respecter of persons. But Jetsam did 


OFF TO SEA 311 


not intend to return in that lowly position. He was 
sure he’d be promoted, and to Jetsam it was like 
becoming a new person. 

Dionis was full of joy for him. The Sextant was 
going round the Horn to the Southern Pacific and 
thence probably to the Japan whaling grounds. 

“Only think,” she said, her eyes dancing with 
interest. “Maybe thee’ll see Juan Fernandez, where 
Robinson Crusoe lived, and Easter Island.” 

“Oh—FEaster Island,” repeated Sam. 

Both young folk knew men who had been there— 
that most remote morsel of land in the whole world. 
A thousand miles of sea stretched in every direction 
about it, yet a series of colossal statues circled its 
barren shore—all with their backs to the sea. The 
poor little tribe of Polynesians (a mystery, too, 
how they got there) knew nothing of the statues, 
whence they came. 

Mystery, adventure, the beauty and wonder of 
the world were open to Jetsam now. 

“Oh, I hope thee’ll see Easter Island,” said 
Dionis for the sixth time. 

“What I want to see is whales,” he answered 
with a manly swagger. 

Then the day came. A sense of fatality about it. 
Jetsam there among them. Uncle Caleb in his home 
near by, familiar at the three meals a day. And 
suddenly they were to be transported into another 
world—yes, it seemed another planet. They would 


312 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


be invisible for three, four, maybe five years. Per- 
haps the families would have letters from them, 
perhaps not. Perhaps their ship would never be 
sighted. Perhaps ! 

But nobody dared to think of that “perhaps” 
except Lydia, and she in her solitary prayers. 

Dionis, as she went about her work dusting and 
straightening Grandfather’s room, had a smother- 
ing feeling in her chest. She didn’t feel like crying, 
she was glad of that. But when dinner-time came, 
she hated the food. She got up busily from the table 
as if to fetch something from the kitchen, but she 
went out the back door without shawl or bonnet 
and walked away to the Commons. She wasn’t 
thinking of Easter Island, or palm trees, or even 
of the long years of the voyage. She was not exactly 
thinking of Jetsam. She was only stupid and lonely 
enough to die. 

It was a spring day, a blowing air fragrant with 
growing things. But the air did not refresh her. The 
old, old sorrow of Nantucket women had come to 
her. 

She had been walking a long time when there was 
a strong running step on the turf*behind her and 
Jetsam came up breathless. 

“Dencey, why, I’ve -een looking for thee an 
hour,” he said crossly. “Thee wouldn’t have let 
me go without even saying good-bye, would thee?” 

““Goot-bye?” she questioned. 


OFF TO SEA 313 


“Yes. I’ve barely got time to get to the ship.” 

She was startled as at the switching sound of a 
lightning flash. He already wore his sailor clothes. 
They made him seem like a stranger—real man- 
hood, all of a sudden. 

“Ts thee angry?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to be 
cross. I—I was afraid I wouldn’t find thee.” 

She looked down and her lips quivered into 
speech. 

“T don’t want thee to go.” 

“Why, I’ve got to go,” he answered. But some- 
thing in the dogged coldness of her voice sent 
courage into him. 

“Dencey,”’ he said softly. Then all at once he 
was speaking. “I love thee. I’ve got to tell thee. I 
can’t help it. I love thee every minute of every day. 
Oh, even when I’m asleep, I’m loving thee. I 
couldn’t even breathe without thee. Dencey, 
won’t thee love me a little? Oh, won’t thee wait 
till I am come back?” 

She looked up. She suddenly knew that this tall, 
strong, beautiful Jetsam needed her more than had 
the little boy out in Jill’s cottage—more than that 
ragged, hungry little boy. 

Their eyes met. Oh, not as they had met before 
at the husking. He saw the gentling in her eyes, he 
saw their thought hovering out toward him, vision- 
ing him, and in an instant he threw both arms about 
her and was kissing her. The bliss was fresh, un- 


314 DOWNRIGHT DENCEY 


tried, unknown. He had been protected from it by 
hate as surely as had she by household love. The 
invisible world swept them into its realities. 

Only a moment. Dionis broke away sobbing. 
She ran down the path toward home. She did not 
once look around. She had not said “‘yes”’ she had 
not even said “good-bye.” Yet, as she ran, there 
came upon her again that sense of belonging to 
Jetsam—the terrible, intimate responsibility for 
him. She could not tell whether it was intense 
gladness or intense sorrow. . 


THE END 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 


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